The problem is rarely a missing feature.
It’s that behavior change got treated as a spoke — bolted onto the side of the product — when the outcome depended on it all along. My work is moving it back toward the hub, and proving it moved the number that matters.
The call tends to come at the same moment. The engagement charts look great — daily actives up, streaks climbing, completion rates healthy — and the clinical outcomes are flat. Or enrollment has stalled and no one can quite say why. The obvious fixes have been tried. The dashboards don’t explain it. That’s usually when a team reaches out.
I don’t arrive with a deck of best practices. Best practices are what everyone already has; they’re not why the outcome is stuck. I get into the specific decision, with the specific team, and the specific evidence — and I stay until the answer is one you can ship and defend.
Where I plug in
Strategic advisory
A recurring thought-partnership for founders and leaders — the standing relationship you call when a behavioral bet is on the table and you want it pressure-tested before you commit real money and roadmap to it.
Embedded leadershipFractional CPO / CXPO / CXO
The deeper mode, for when the behavioral and outcomes strategy needs to be owned at the executive level — often as a fractional chief product, experience, or science officer — not advised from the outside. I step into the seat and get into the roadmap with the people building the thing: which behavior drives the outcome, how to design for it, and how to prove it moved — with the authority to make it stick, and in a way that leaves the capability in the team after I step out. Selective by design.
Board & scientific advisory roles
Governance-level counsel where a company needs behavioral and outcomes rigor represented in the room where the big calls get made.
Most engagements start with a focused diagnostic — a scoped first look that tells us whether the problem is what you think it is — before we commit to anything larger. It’s the cheapest way to find out if we’re the right fit for each other.
What it’s like to work with me
You get me.
Not a bench of associates learning on your problem — the person whose name is on the work. For a bespoke practice, small isn’t a limitation; it’s the point. It’s why the counsel is senior, direct, and specific to you.
I’m evidence-first, and I’ll tell you what the literature actually says — including when it says your favorite idea won’t work. That’s the job. But here’s the part people don’t expect: the behavioral strategy that ignores the clinicians, PMs, and operators who have to deliver it is the strategy that quietly dies. A change the team resents is a change that doesn’t ship. So I design with those people, not over them — because organizational alignment isn’t a nicety on top of the work, it’s load-bearing to whether the work survives contact with reality.
Direct about the science, generous with the team. Those aren’t in tension. They’re the whole approach.
When to call me
Reach out when the stakes are real and behavior has to change for the outcome to move — and when you’d rather have rigor than folklore. If you need someone to rubber-stamp a plan, I’m the wrong call. If you want someone who’ll find the one lever that matters, prove it moved, and leave your team stronger for it, that’s the work.
Dr Kate Wolin 