Rachel is the Research Operations Lead in the Social Security Directorate of the Scottish Government. She is responsible for leading on the development and management of Research Operations and helping a team of over 30 user researchers conduct quality research at scale. Rachel has extensive experience in user research and research operations with a particular focus on knowledge management, data governance and privacy, user research methodologies, effective tooling, team education and recruitment. She has a complementary background in nursing where her communication, organisation and governance skills were honed. Rachel devised and programmed the SSD Research Repository which ensures user research writeups, methodologies, analysis and playback reports, plus a wide range other relevant materials are captured, classified and easily available to user centred design teams through our online platform. She is a great believer in making the greatest impact within your organisation utilising your currently available resources, paving the way for future buy-in. This is something she actively seeks to promote within her work at the Scottish Government. When Rachel isn’t working on all things Research Ops, you can find her in British Columbia spending quality time with family, enjoying photography and the great outdoors.