Kate Towsey
Author of Research That Scales
Kate Towsey is an independent strategist, coach, and advisor. For more than a decade, she has been at the forefront of ResearchOps. The inventor of the widely used acronym PWDR (pau·duh) for “people who do research,” Kate also wrote some of the earliest blog posts about setting up research operations, founded the ResearchOps Community, and launched the #WhatisResearchOps movement, putting ResearchOps on the map.
In 2019, she stepped back from the ResearchOps Community and started the Cha Cha Club, a members’ club for full-time ResearchOps professionals, which she runs to this day. Over twenty years, Kate has delivered operations in ecommerce, education, government, retail, and tech. She built and managed the Atlassian ResearchOps team, widely recognized as the benchmark for scaling research services and systems to hundreds of people. Learn more at katetowsey.com, or find her on LinkedIn, Medium, or Substack
Rosenverse talks by Kate:
" Research is democratized: if you’re not democratizing, you probably don’t even realize everyone in your company is talking to users in different ways. "
Participant Recruitment and Management Tools
March 12, 2026
" Everything is really a system. Even punk rock had systems to enable it. "
ResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
October 16, 2025
" Adoption is crucial; build your community early by involving them in co-design and pilots. "
Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
" Skin folk aren’t necessarily kinfolk — diversity doesn’t magically prevent inequitable research. "
Theme Panel
March 11, 2025
" Engagement and impact roles bring creativity and help maintain team morale in otherwise dry operations work. "
The State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
June 20, 2019
