IRRATIONAL - Key Persons
Abi Warren is a Behavioral Scientist at Irrational Labs.
She is passionate about applying behavioral science to healthcare to improve patient outcomes, experiences, and equity. She has worked with governmental, non-profit, and commercial organizations across several industries (e.g. healthcare, finance, nutrition) including the World Bank, Planned Parenthood, the governments of Madagascar and Mexico, Kellogg, and Microsoft to understand systemic problems and design innovative solutions. In addition to Irrational Labs, Abi has worked with behavioral science organizations including ideas42 and BVA Nudge Unit.
Abi received a BA in Economics from Cornell University with a minor in Spanish. Abi is also a Bilingual Birth Doula through which she provides informational, emotional, and physical support for pregnant people and their families before, during, and after labor.
Allison is a Behavioral Scientist at Irrational Labs.
She has two years of experience working at Duke University's Common Cents Lab, where she has designed and tested behavioral science-based solutions to improve the financial well-being of low- to moderate-income individuals. Prior to her time at Duke, Allison spent four years as a User Experience Designer at Deloitte Consulting, where she scoped and led the end-to-end design process, from user research through high fidelity prototyping. She enjoys finding intersection points between behavioral science and user experience design, and exploring what the two disciplines have to offer one another. Allison holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the College of William and Mary, with a double major in Marketing and Sociology.
Job Titles:
- Behavioral Scientist
- Behavioral Scientist and Research Consultant With
- Senior Consultant at Catalyst Behavioral Sciences
Asaf is a Behavioral Scientist at Irrational Labs.
Asaf is a behavioral scientist and research consultant with Irrational Labs. Broadly, he studies how we can disrupt old behaviors and replace them with new behaviors that stick. His work blends a rich toolbox of research methods (field experiments, experience sampling, smartphone data) and advanced statistical analyses to hone in on ways to generate behavior change "in the wild."
As a senior consultant at Catalyst Behavioral Sciences, Asaf was involved with solving various behavioral challenges in public health, policy, and industry: From reverse-engineering what makes some national wellness programs enrollees drop out after a week while others maintain healthy behavior for years, to helping Fortune 100 companies design and deploy market research that drives sales across four continents.
His academic work has been published in prestigious journals such as Psychological Science and Behavior Science and Policy, and his applied work has been featured in outlets such as Politico and the Washington Post. Asaf is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California. He holds a Master's degree in psychology from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and English Literature from Ben-Gurion University (Israel). When not working, you can find him playing piano or spending time with his wife and their assortment of adorable furry creatures.
Celia is a Behavioral Scientist at Irrational Labs.
Celia specializes in applying insights from human psychology to product design and development. She has her PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Toronto and has 8 years of experience writing, researching, and designing human psychology experiments. In her consulting work, she advises clients on applying behavioral science principles to the financial, tech, and public sectors to help consumers save more money, make better investment decisions, and increase customer engagement.
Job Titles:
- Behavioral Scientist
- Behavioral Scientist and Research Consultant With
Deena is a behavioral scientist and research consultant with Irrational Labs.
She is an expert at merging best practices in user experience design and behavioral science. She has 20 years of experience designing human-centered products with a deep focus on climate change interventions. As the head of design at Opower, she created products that nudged people to use less energy, with a big impact: Opower has saved 25 billion kWh of energy across 50 million homes. Deena writes and speaks about behavioral design at places such as Stanford, MIT, TEDx, SXSW, Medium, GOOD magazine, and VentureBeat.
Evelyn is a Managing Director at Irrational Labs and frequent speaker in behavioral economics and consumer psychology.
She is an expert in helping companies use the science of decision-making to better understand how real people think and behave, thereby creating better products and services for them.
Evelyn's work spans a broad array of industries: she has worked with Google, Procter & Gamble, Intuit, The World Bank, TikTok, Microsoft, Airbnb, and Indeed, among others. Evelyn also led the development of Irrational Labs' Behavioral Economics Bootcamp, and is passionate about training others to use behavioral science methodologies.
Evelyn transitioned to the world of behavioral economics from a background in Product Management and Marketing. She started her career at Christian Dior Parfums in Paris and subsequently worked in various product management, marketing, and sales positions.
Evelyn holds a B.A. in cultural anthropology from Duke University and graduated summa cum laude. She also completed a Master's degree in Marketing from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in France. She speaks fluent French and Russian.
Isabel Macdonald is a Behavioral Scientist with Irrational Labs.
She holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University, with a specialty in behavioral economics. She is passionate about how a deeper understanding of economic and psychological forces can guide the development of technology tools for social good. She has worked with financial institutions, NGOs, and government agencies to implement large scale experiments, as well as to develop tech products that help users achieve their financial and professional goals.
Previously, Isabel was a consultant in the Talent practice for Mercer Consulting. In this role, she advised Fortune 500 companies on developing talent pipelines, HR analytics, and compensation strategies that maximize employee motivation and productivity.
Isabel also holds a postdoctoral research position at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Her current research explores how mobile apps help teachers implement remedial education and how blockchain and crypto-backed wallets advance financial inclusion globally.
Job Titles:
- Admin
- Executive Assistant
- Joanna See / Admin
Joanna is the admin of Irrational Labs and executive assistant of Kristen Berman.
She brings years of experience handling office tasks efficiently. Proven cost-cutting abilities while maintaining high standards and achieving company goals.
Job Titles:
- Behavioral Scientist
- Behavioral Scientist and Research Consultant With
Joe is a behavioral scientist and research consultant with Irrational Labs.
Joe is a behavioral scientist at Irrational Labs and loves to write and speak on our decision-making, what influences us to act the way we do, and how we create a world for the humans we are. His goals are to get teams to ditch jargon, relate to one another, and feel happy to take their ideas forward.
Joe's superpower is combining experts, frameworks, and great research to build better products and services. He facilitates and runs sessions that are fun, informative, and gets teams closer to their goals. He's previously solved people and business problems as a Behavioural Scientist for a creative writing and training company, Schwa; as a Behaviour Change Consultant for the London Borough of Croydon; and is currently a Design Thinking Lead for tech consultancy Container Solutions.
He's been lucky enough to help brands solve issues like: how do you get people to continue playing mobile games, how do you stop rail workers from electrocuting themselves, and how do you solve the plastic pollution crisis. For a range of companies including King, HSBC, IKEA, E.ON, Easyjet, Pepsi, Unilever, and EY.
Joe moved towards behavioral design from a background in behavioural science-based market research at System1 Research. Where he worked as a consultant on bespoke research projects with clients and product development and optimisation manager. He has guest lectured at UCL, The London Behavioural Economics Network, WARC, and CommonVC
Joe holds a BSc (hons) in Psychology from London Metropolitan University, with MRS training in research methodologies including mobile ethnography and econometrics. He's a practitioner of The Association of Business Psychology and a member of the Association of Qualitative Research. He's apologetically British and is based in London. He also thinks he's the first person in the UK to complete Dan Ariely's Coursera course back in 2013.
Karl is a behavioral scientist with Irrational Labs.
Karl is a passionate advocate for behavioral science having built a number of behavioral science teams throughout his career. He believes that by combining rapid experimentation with a deep understanding of human behavior, organizations can help people to become healthier, happier, and wealthier.
Karl is an entertaining and enthusiastic presenter who helps people get excited about applying behavioral science having previously lectured at Dublin City University and designing bespoke training programs for leading Irish financial institutions.
Prior to working with Irrational Labs, Karl played a key role in driving the adoption of behavioral science in Irish policymaking. Working in Ireland's Department of Finance, he built a network of behavioral science enthusiasts, successfully secured funding for the application of behavioral science, and delivered the Irish government's first randomized control trial to increase jobseekers' attendance at job centres.
Following his work in the Department of Finance, Karl was headhunted to create and lead a behavioral science team at the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). During his time as program manager, he successfully delivered over 25 discrete research projects, 5 randomized controlled trials, and co-designed decision aids such as the SEAI's electric vehicle comparison tool.
Karl has advised government leaders at the highest levels on how to apply behavioral science to improve policy outcomes. Most recently Karl provided advice to Ireland's National Public Health and Emergency Team on how to reduce the spread of Covid-19 and maximize vaccination uptake.
Karl received his MSc in Behavioural Science for Management from the University in Stirling and his BSc in Business and Finance from Dublin City University. Karl also holds a higher diploma in science in data analytics from Dublin Business School.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Our Co - Founder and CEO
Kristen co-founded Irrational Labs, a behavioral product design company, with Dan Ariely in 2013. Irrational Labs helps companies and nonprofits understand and leverage behavioral economics to increase the health, wealth and happiness of their users. She also co-founded Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative dedicated to improving the financial well-being for low to middle Americans. Under Kristen's leadership, Common Cents launched over 50 experiments with companies, touching tens of thousands of people. Kristen's work has been featured in The Stanford Innovation Review, TechCrunch, and Scientific American.
She was on the founding team for the behavioral economics group at Google, a group that touches over 26 teams across Google, and she hosted one of the top behavioral change conferences globally, StartupOnomics. She co-authored a series of workbooks called Hacking Human Nature for Good: A practical guide to changing behavior, with Dan Ariely. These workbooks are being used at companies like Google, Intuit, Netflix, Fidelity, Lending Club for business strategy and design work.
Before designing, testing and scaling products that use behavioral economics, Kristen was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit and startup, Lytro. She built product management and marketing systems for small businesses and consumers, for domestic and international markets. The core thread throughout this all is a deep passion for understanding why people behave the way they do and then building solutions that make their lives better. And in her personal life, Kristen lives behavioral science. She's started a communal living environment called Radish, to design life for happieness.
Lindsay Juarez is a Director at Irrational Labs.
Lindsay is an expert in applying behavioral science insights to encourage meaningful behavior change. She is particularly interested in interventions that make taking the daily behaviors that lead to long-term goal success-such as exercising or saving for retirement-not just easier but also more enjoyable and fun. At Irrational Labs, Lindsay focuses on designing and testing interventions in the financial and health domains. Before she joined Irrational Labs, she was a Senior Behavioral Researcher at the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, a behavioral science center committed to research make people happier, healthier, and wealthier.
Prior to her work at Irrational Labs and the CAH, Lindsay worked for the federal Government Accountability Office and at New York University on a series of multi-site school interventions to reduce the racial academic achievement gap. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation and published in top policy and psychology journals. She's consulted for energy and sustainability non-profits and worked with clients as varied as meditation start-ups and cookbooks to international banks to incorporate behavioral science insights.
Lindsay received her BA in psychology from Reed College and her MA and PhD in social psychology from the University of Virginia. In the service of the quest for enjoyable exercise, she's completed her 200-hour yoga teacher certification and two barre instructor certifications.
Job Titles:
- Behavioral Scientist
- Research Consultant
Lisa is a behavioral scientist and research consultant with broad expertise in behavioral economics, consumer behavior, and social psychology.
She holds a Ph.D. in Judgment Decision Making Psychology from Columbia University and completed her post-doctoral training at the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School. Lisa's work has been published in an array of prestigious academic journals, including Psychological Science, PNAS and Nature: Climate Change, and has also appeared in numerous media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Scientific American.
In addition to her academic research experience, she leverages 5+ years of applied behavioral science consulting experience, working across a range of industries (health care, financial services, energy efficiency, market research) to apply her professional knowledge of behavioral science to solve practical business and policy challenges. She has worked with Facebook, CUNA Mutual, Ipsos, PG&E and the United Nations, among many others.
Lisa also holds an adjunct research scientist appointment at Columbia University, where she has taught Judgement and Decision Making courses and research methods.
Monica is a Behavioral Scientist at Irrational Labs.
Monica specializes in the intersection between Behavioral Science and Service Design. She enjoys blending insights from organizational, cognitive, and social psychology with human-centered design tools to change behavior both within teams and with customers. Monica has enabled product and service teams to unpack how context shapes decisions, form hypotheses, and build testable designs to help end-users flourish.
Before Irrational Labs, Monica worked as a Service Designer at a Canadian bank (CIBC) and as a Behavioral Economics consultant for a boutique firm (BEworks) across a variety of sectors. She's helped reduce bias in hiring, increase savings and manage debt, improve energy conservation, and increase school attendance, among other real-world problems.
Monica holds an Honors Psychology degree from McGill University and an MSc in Organizational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. More than that, her years of practical experience have taught her how to apply theory and evidence to make a difference in this complex, messy, and wonderful world in which we behave.
Richard is a Managing Director at Irrational Labs.
He has extensive experience applying behavioral economics in a variety of fields, including finance, health, nutrition, security, education, and international development. Prior to joining Irrational Labs, Richard was a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the Common Cents Lab, a Duke University initiative which leverages behavioral economics to improve the financial well-being of low and moderate income Americans, where he designed and launched numerous behaviorally-informed products, features, initiatives, and experiments.
Formerly Richard has applied behavioral economics at ideas42 and developed randomized controlled trials at Innovations for Poverty Action in Morocco. He served as Senior Advisor at USAID's Office of Development Credit, where he promoted access to finance throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Richard also worked at Cornerstone Research, an economic and financial consulting firm specializing in complex commercial litigation. He has consulted for PepsiCo in Chile and USAID's Office of Education and worked on the trading floor of UBS Investment Bank and at the US Embassy in Mexico.
Richard holds a Master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he studied Advanced Policy and Economic Analysis and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, where he studied economics, Spanish, and French, graduating Phi Beta Kappa.
Rob is a Marketing Manager at Irrational Labs.
Rob is an experienced digital growth marketer, focusing on technical implementation, analytics and strategy. He began his career working in Congressional Leadership in Washington, DC, helping Members of Congress and their staff to leverage digital marketing tools. He has led marketing teams for several early and mid stage startups, in addition to working in an agency setting.
Job Titles:
- Head of Business Development
Robbie is the Head of Business Development at Irrational Labs and is an expert at driving intentional go-to-market strategies. He has built sales teams at Microsoft, Newfront, Celonis & a number of startups during the M&A portion of his career. Robbie is working with the Irrational Labs team not just on growth but to do so in the right manner, with the right people, and with the right customers/partners.
Ryan leads the educational initiatives at Irrational Labs.
He specializes in "making curriculum pop" for learners in formal and informal settings. Ryan's professional career began in the entertainment industry working as a field marketing representative for Virgin Records, DJing at NPR in Detroit, and doing production work at E! Entertainment Television.
After working in Los Angeles, Ryan transitioned into education. He started as a high school English teacher and developed into leadership positions in the New York City Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools and Glenbard Township High School District 87 in Glen Ellyn, IL. He joined the Irrational Labs team after serving as a high school and elementary school principal in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Ryan has been an adjunct professor in the education departments of Aurora, Benedictine, Roosevelt Universities (in the Chicagoland area), a lecturer at Columbia University, and occasionally teaches graduate education courses at Madonna University.
His consultancy Mindblue.com and social network Making Curriculum Pop led to collaborations and presentations for a wide variety of students, teachers, K-12 school districts, colleges and organizations like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Virgin Records and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His work has been featured in national media and he has written for publications including the Journal of Staff Development, Journal of Media Literacy, and The New York Times Learning Network. His first book on literacy and collaborative learning titled Making Curriculum Pop: Developing Literacies across All Content Areas (co-written with his mother) was co-published by the National Council Teachers of English (NCTE) and Free Spirit Press.
Ryan holds a Bachelor's Degree in English and a Master's Degree in Education from the University of Michigan. His doctorate is in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on adult education and cognitive science from Columbia University in New York City. He presently lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife and daughter.
Sara is a Behavioral Researcher with Irrational Labs. She brings over 10 years of corporate and nonprofit experience focused on developing innovative and actionable client solutions.
Previously, Sara worked at the International Rescue Committee as the Senior Program Officer overseeing resettlement operations in 26 cities. At the environmental consulting firm of D-Max Engineering, Sara assisted 18 municipalities with water quality improvement projects and served as the company's financial officer.
Sara conducted research at the UC San Diego Center for Brain and Cognition, as well as the California Neuropsychopharmacology Research Institute. Sara holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from UC San Diego and is fluent in Persian.