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:
" I don’t believe any group collaboratively keeps taxonomy tidy — you need a dedicated librarian. "
ResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
October 16, 2025
" Every operation is going to have whirlwinds and fires all the time; strategy doesn't end that. "
Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
" Research teams need to be strategic about building tools to do ethical research, not just diverse. "
Theme Panel
March 11, 2025
" You cannot provide end-to-end service for every researcher, but you can deliver highly supported self-service — Kate Towsey. "
The State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
June 20, 2019
