Benjamin Ostrowski, PhD

Senior People Researcher @ Atlassian · Adjunct Professor @ Campus.edu · ex-Humu · ex-Duolingo

Hello!

My goal is to help organizations, their teams, and their customers thrive by using research to guide decision-making and solve complex problems, and by reliably collecting, analyzing, and presenting data.

I am a senior people researcher and data analyst specializing in team collaboration. I have 7+ years of people data experience working at global tech companies, HR tech startups, leading a racial justice non-profit, and more.

At Atlassian, I conduct rigorous research, analyze complex datasets to discover insights, and distill takeaways into decision recommendations for team performance, equitable employee experiences, and organizational effectiveness.

I am also committed to making education more accessible for underserved populations. To this end, I teach at Campus, an alternative to community college that is dedicated to affordability, access, and quality support in higher education, and help run a racial justice non-profit in my home state of CT.

Education

Ph.D., Organizational Behavior, Carnegie Mellon University
M.S., Organizational Behavior, Carnegie Mellon University
A.B., Psychology, Brown University

Management

At Humu, I managed project teams in the development of new features, including designing surveys, generating collaboration insights, analyzing data, and collaborating with designers and engineers.
At SCORE, I led a team of directors as Executive Director of a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization promoting racial equity in my home state of CT.
At Carneige Mellon, I oversaw teams of RAs carrying out complex research projects as a Principal Investigator.

Resume ~ LinkedIn ~ Meet

Select Skills

Methods
- Experimentation (lab/field); survey design; archival data acquisition; R, SQL, Excel
Analyses
- Descriptive, transformative, exploratory, hypothesis, and advanced statistical analysis; data cleaning and mining; dashboards.
- Regressions (linear, logistic, polynomial, etc.); mediation/moderation analyses; psychometrics; structural equation modeling (SEM); social network analysis (SNA); longitudinal methods; hierarchical linear modeling (HLM); textual analysis.
- Data visualization; data storytelling.
Data
- Employee/organizational behavioral data (e.g., HRIS, academic studies); self-report data; archival data; qualitative data (e.g., surveys, interviews).

Reference from Dr. Stefanie Tignor, VP of Data Science and Insights at Humu

"Ben is a true teammate in every sense of the word. He is extremely productive, reliable, and will not only move a project forward, but will seek to elevate it each step of the way. He has an immense knowledge of behavioral science, but is also able to apply it directly and practically to create compelling product experiences. His learning orientation is also so impressive: he's deeply interested in how he can improve, learn, and grow. Any team is lucky to have Ben; my projects at Humu have been much higher quality because of his contributions."

Reference from Dr. Rachel Callan, Head of Behavioral Science at Humu

"We were so lucky to have Ben on our team leading a variety of projects for behavioral science. Ben is knowledgeable on a number of topics related to teams and motivation, and he's able to apply that knowledge creatively to solve practical problems in the applied space. In addition, he's a fantastic teammate, easily able to collaborate cross-functionally, provides helpful feedback to colleagues, and brings new ideas to the table."

Reference from Allison White, Behavioral Scientist at Humu

"Ben's research expertise on teams was so uniquely positioned to help Humu think through some of our big priorities during his time here. As I interacted with colleagues, I was met with the constant refrain: "Ben actually has some familiarity with that space" or "Ben's research touches that issue." Ben was also great at jumping in and finding ways to apply his research to Humu in creative and innovative ways. I've been impressed by his ability to communicate academic research to non-academic audiences in a way that lands. To add to all of this, he also has impressive data chops! Humu was lucky to have Ben, and I consider myself lucky to have had him as a teammate."