Product Lead · UX Researcher · Digital Analyst

Hi, I'm
Chris.

I figure out what users actually need, then help teams build it. Most of my work has been in healthcare, wellness, and financial services, usually somewhere between early hypothesis and running at scale.

Product Management UX Research Competitive Analysis Agile Delivery 0 to 1 Builds Experience Strategy Journey Mapping
View case studies → Download resume ↗
Chris Pennell
Available
Full-time or Fractional
MBA
Rice University, 2026
Experience
10+ years
10+
Years shipping digital products in healthcare, wellness, and financial services
500+
Clinical clients at scale, Jintronix
78%
Guest adoption in 3 weeks, Canyon Ranch
~175
Usability interviews conducted on a single project
About

Most of my career has been the gap between a hypothesis and something users actually adopt

Product Manager and 2026 Rice MBA candidate. Ten years in healthcare, wellness, and financial services, across early-stage startups, enterprise consultancy, and everything in between.

I work across the full product lifecycle: research, roadmap, delivery, and iteration. In regulated markets, that means every UX call has compliance implications, every sprint has stakeholder visibility, and every research finding needs to come with a recommendation, not just a summary.

What I bring
Research that drives roadmap decisions
I plan and run usability research, synthesize findings, and present recommendations to stakeholders with business impact rationale. Every roadmap decision has evidence behind it.
Competitive analysis before product direction
I benchmark digital product landscapes before defining what to build. Competitive analyses I've run have shaped investment cases, go-to-market strategies, and feature prioritization across multiple engagements.
Agile delivery in complex, regulated domains
Healthcare, insurance, entertainment union contexts. Distributed teams, compliance requirements, and competing stakeholder priorities all in the same sprint. I've managed that environment across multiple 0-to-1 builds.
Open to
Full-time roles Fractional PM/Strategy/Research Leadership Advisory Digital product analysis
Skills and tools
Product
Roadmapping Discovery MoSCoW RICE OKRs
Research
Ethnographic Usability testing Card sorting Competitive analysis Hypothesis tracking
Delivery
Figma Mural Agile / Scrum Jira
Industries
HealthTech Wellness Insurance Enterprise SaaS
Case Studies

Selected work

5 projects
Canyon Ranch
Principal PM Mobile App 0 to 1
Canyon Ranch
Competitive analysis, usability research, and agile delivery across a distributed team to take 40 years of paper-based wellness scheduling to a native iOS app. 78% guest adoption in 3 weeks and +15% ancillary revenue.
InfoBeans, 5 months View project ↗
Jintronix
PM and UX Lead HealthTech 0 to Scale
Jintronix
Seven years as founding PM. Competitive analysis, ethnographic research, and agile delivery from concept through 500+ clinical clients across North America. 15x increase in patient session time.
Founding PM, 7 years View project ↗
SAG-AFTRA
Principal PM Health Plan
SAG-AFTRA
Health plan enrollment redesign for 160,000 members. Reduced member confusion and support call volume through research-grounded UX.
InfoBeans, 5 months View project ↗
CoAdvantage
Principal PM Enterprise SaaS
CoAdvantage
HR platform UX redesign and design system for a national PEO serving 7,000+ businesses across the US.
InfoBeans, 3 months View project ↗
Connect2Trials
Product Strategist HealthTech
Connect2Trials
Clinical trial recruitment platform MVP. Aligned sponsors, sites, and CROs around a patient-first enrollment experience.
Fractional PO, 8 months View project ↗