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:
" Research’s role may shift to orchestrators of AI-synthesized insights and gap analyses rather than just primary data collectors. "
Participant Recruitment and Management Tools
March 12, 2026
" Campfires are tribal, engaged knowledge spaces, libraries are corporate buildings, organized and curated. "
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
" I never talk about the business and the business value, there are people making decisions you should understand. "
Theme Panel
March 11, 2025
" Managing vendors is a full-time job, and research ops teams often coordinate numerous vendors for tools and recruitment. "
The State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
June 20, 2019
