Sam Ladner
Sociologist and Researcher
Sam Ladner (she/her) is a sociologist who helps teams innovate, design, and learn. She is the author of Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in The Private Sector and Mixed Methods: A Short Guide to Applied Mixed Methods Research. She has worked on dozens of software projects at Microsoft, Amazon, and many other client companies. She recently retired from Workday, an enterprise software company, as a Senior Principal Researcher studying the future of work. She received her PhD in sociology from York University and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Rosenverse talks by Sam:
" Stories don’t work by extraction, people tell them and you listen. "
Methodological toolkit for unique research impact
March 11, 2026
" Interviews can be a crutch that keeps us from using better ways to answer our questions. "
Methodologies: Beyond the interview [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 4, 2024
" Rigour really is just a method; it’s knowing why you made the choices and tradeoffs you did. "
How Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
March 9, 2022
" Strategic positioning means research is a decision-making tool, not just a service to requests. "
The Future of Research: Bridging the Gaps
July 29, 2021
" The insurance clerks were chained to their desks, no longer making quick social pop-overs to colleagues. "
Data Exhaust and Personal Data: Learning from Consumer Products to Enhance Enterprise UX
June 8, 2016
" Radical innovation isn’t the main form of change; the main form is connections, like open APIs with massive downstream effects. "
Discussion
June 8, 2016
