Hidden Gems in Optimization: The Women Behind The Metrics
Celebrating women in CRO who are redefining experimentation with creativity, data-driven insights, and a human-centered approach.
Key Points:
Meet five women in CRO who are redefining experimentation through innovative, data-driven approaches that drive engagement and conversions. Here’s how they’re making an impact:
- Carmen Albisteanu at Salt Bank optimizes onboarding by identifying and addressing drop-off points to improve user activation.
- Lori Cantwell at Codal introduces a “build-your-own” service bundle approach, bringing an e-commerce feel to lead generation.
- Michele Barnes at Instapage boosts engagement with sticky CTAs, achieving a 40% increase in form fills.
- Ninsiima Rukandema at Hookflash combines qualitative and quantitative data to uncover user needs and tailor journeys.
- Sumita Mukund at The Good draws inspiration from social dynamics to create authentic, engaging user experiences.
Discover their unique strategies and join Women in Experimentation (WiE) to connect with more leaders driving change in CRO.
Women often take on a substantial amount of unseen work in the workplace—work that’s crucial but rarely recognized.
From managing team logistics to organizing events and fostering team cohesion, these “invisible” tasks frequently fall to women and play an essential role in maintaining a productive environment. Yet, this kind of work is rarely a fast track to promotions or recognition.
Then, there’s the “Matilda Effect,” originally coined to describe how women scientists’ achievements were frequently attributed to male colleagues. This issue extends beyond the sciences. In many fields, women’s accomplishments are minimized or outright credited to others, especially in male-dominated environments where assertiveness is often linked with success. Even when women take on high-profile roles, they still face an uphill battle to be recognized, as others may be quicker to claim the spotlight.
Addressing this requires a workplace culture shift—one that acknowledges the importance of these often-overlooked contributions and puts policies in place to recognize them fairly. Only then can the invisible labor that women contribute be seen for what it is: a vital part of every organization’s success.
The good news? Things are changing, especially in experimentation, where success hinges on data-driven insights. As companies increasingly prioritize diverse perspectives in testing and data analysis, more space is opening up for women to have their contributions quantified and celebrated.
Women in Experimentation (WiE): Setting the Stage for Women to Be Seen
Women in Experimentation (WiE) is pushing for a field where diverse voices don’t just participate—they lead. What began as a simple list of female speakers in growth and testing has grown into a global community of over 1,000 members, providing women with the resources, network, and platform to thrive in the field.
Founded by Daphne Tideman and Lucia van den Brink, WiE has become the go-to space for women in experimentation to connect, share insights, and build influence.
WiE’s momentum hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2023, they won the Experimentation Culture Award for fostering an inclusive, supportive environment for experimentation professionals.
In 2024, they won the Experimentation Elite Community Award, solidifying their role as a major influence in the industry.
A key milestone for WiE was the Convert x WiE Summit, a first-of-its-kind event that brought together over 800+ attendees with a speaker lineup that was 70% women and 60% people of color—a platform for diverse perspectives to shine.
The Convert x Women in Experimentation (WiE) Summit wasn’t just another event on the CRO calendar—it was created to fill a glaring gap in the industry. Traditional CRO conferences tend to have similar lineups, familiar faces, and predictable topics. The Convert x WiE Summit was designed to break this mold by bringing fresh, underrepresented voices and diverse expertise to the forefront. Organized with the vision of amplifying women’s contributions in experimentation, this summit redefined what it means to create a truly inclusive space in CRO.
Why This Event Was Needed
Women, and especially women of color, have been historically underrepresented in the fields of CRO and experimentation, despite being innovators and leaders in these areas. The Convert x WiE Summit was organized to shift this narrative and give these professionals a platform where their insights and perspectives could be shared widely.
Session Highlights
Each session brought fresh insights from experts across the industry:
● Ethics in Experimentation: From Georgia Sugarman’s session on trauma-informed research with vulnerable groups to Axelle Ahanhanzo’s take on fostering neurodiversity in experimentation, the summit highlighted ways to run experiments that don’t just optimize metrics but genuinely consider users’ needs.
● Behavioral Science Meets CRO: Line-Ariel Bretous’s session on applying behavioral science to user journeys and Eden Bidani’s deep dive into the true roots of conversion issues were standout examples of how understanding human behavior can power CRO in real, impactful ways.
● Practical Skills and Stakeholder Buy-In: Speakers like Oreoluwa Akinnawo and Ruben De Boer shared strategies for aligning stakeholders with experimentation goals and building practical frameworks for prioritizing high-impact experiments—an invaluable skill set for anyone managing CRO initiatives.
Beyond the sessions, the Convert x WiE Summit was about connection. Moderated networking sessions by growth expert Daphne Tideman allowed attendees to forge meaningful connections with industry peers. For many, this summit felt like joining a community—one where diversity is celebrated as a source of strength in experimentation.
WiE just launched a Substack newsletter, providing a platform for members to share insights, experiences, and updates within the experimentation community.
Be Better November: Celebrating Women Innovators in Experimentation x WiE
As part of “Be Better November” for CRO Month, we’re spotlighting five women from the WiE community who are breaking new ground in experimentation and growth.
These leaders have taken on unique challenges in their roles, driving meaningful change through data-driven testing and optimization. From improving onboarding experiences to uncovering unmet needs, these women are setting the standard for innovation in CRO.
Meet Our Featured Innovators:
- Carmen Albisteanu (Tale), Growth Strategy Analyst at Salt Bank
- Lori Cantwell, CRO Analyst at Codal
- Michele Barnes, Senior Manager of Strategic Services at Instapage
- Ninsiima Rukandema, an Experimentation analyst at Hookflash
- Sumita Mukund, a Conversion Strategist at The Good
Carmen Albisteanu: Reimagining Onboarding and Activation for Digital Banking
As a Growth Strategy Analyst at Salt Bank, Romania’s first fully digital bank, Carmen Albisteanu (Tale) is tackling one of the biggest challenges for new banks: maximizing onboarding and activation rates.
Carmen’s approach relies on close analysis of user behavior data to pinpoint where users are likely to drop off and then running targeted experiments to keep more users engaged.
One key insight came from the ID verification step, a notorious friction point in digital banking where users are required to capture a clear photo of their ID for visual identification. By adding a brief tutorial that offers practical tips—like using the original ID (not a photocopy) and positioning it in good lighting—Carmen’s team has streamlined the verification process, working through multiple iterations to reduce drop-offs at this stage.
User activation has been another priority. After reaching out directly to customers who had opened accounts but weren’t yet using them, Carmen discovered a common barrier: many users believed they needed a physical card to begin transacting. Armed with this insight, her team adjusted onboarding communications to clarify that all essential banking features were available digitally and that users could begin immediately, even while waiting for their physical card to arrive.
Further enhancing activation, Carmen’s team moved the “add to wallet” button into the onboarding flow, making it more convenient for users to set up their digital wallet right from the start. This simple shift has shown promising results, with higher activation rates expected.
Through behavioral insights and iterative experimentation, Carmen is helping Salt Bank create a seamless, intuitive experience that drives user engagement from day one.
Lori Cantwell: Applying Ecommerce Methods to Lead Generation
Lori Cantwell, CRO Analyst at Codal, has been spearheading conversion optimization initiatives that take a fresh approach to digital experiences.
Over the past six months, Lori has built a systematic experimentation process, enabling Codal to rigorously test, analyze, and optimize client platforms. She’s also played a key role in complex re-platforming and data integration projects, giving clients deeper insights and strategic decision-making power.
Recently, Lori’s work has expanded into an innovative area: applying e-commerce methodologies to lead generation.
One of her standout initiatives involves creating a “build-your-own” service bundle feature that brings an e-commerce feel to a service-based business. “This concept arose from our research into user needs and the strategic goals we’ve been working on with our client,” Lori shares. The idea is to make it easier for customers to see how different services can be bundled for added value, ultimately increasing engagement and encouraging the adoption of complementary offerings. Lori and her team are actively testing this approach, aiming to confirm its viability before committing to a full-scale rollout.
“Our initiative is to develop a ‘build-your-own’ service bundle experience that mimics elements of a shopping environment… to help customers better understand how various services can be combined for greater value, while also driving increased adoption of complementary offerings.”
Lori Cantwell, CRO Analyst at Codal
The “build-your-own” service bundle approach Lori is exploring at Codal has seen success in consulting, where flexibility is key.
● For example, ServiceNow offers customizable packages that let clients combine consulting, implementation, and optimization services tailored to their needs.
● Similarly, Bain & Company works with clients to build bespoke consulting engagements across areas like strategy, operations, and digital transformation.
By letting clients pick and choose services, these firms deliver more targeted, impactful solutions—similar to the user-centric approach Lori uses to improve lead generation.
Michele Barnes: Triggering Sticky CTAs to Increase Leads
Michele Barnes, Senior Manager of Strategic Services at Instapage, collaborates closely with clients to enhance landing page performance through targeted CRO strategies and experimentation. With a passion for creating impactful marketing plans, Michele draws on expertise in SEO, paid media, email marketing, and CRO, bringing measurable results to businesses across industries.
At Instapage, Michele helps clients test different page elements, like value propositions and layouts, to boost engagement and drive conversions.
Recently, Michele worked with Viva Eve, a women’s healthcare provider in New York, to increase lead generation through form fills on their landing pages. After analyzing the client’s pages, Michele recommended a custom-triggered sticky call-to-action (CTA) to keep the form button visible as users scrolled, providing an “always visible” prompt to drive action. She explains that the sticky CTA was “triggered after the visitor scrolled past the form,” anchoring them back to it and guaranteeing a seamless experience.
On mobile, Michele’s team positioned the sticky CTA at the bottom of the screen, where users naturally hold their phones, making it easy to access. This change led to a 40% increase in form fills.
A follow-up test confirmed the results, and Viva Eve saw a substantial boost in leads, demonstrating the effectiveness of Michele’s strategic experimentation.
Studies show that sticky CTAs—buttons that stay visible as users scroll—can make a measurable difference in conversions.
● In one example, Conversion Rate Experts found a 25% increase in sales when they added a sticky CTA to a long-form page. Keeping the CTA visible made it easy for users to take action without needing to scroll back and reduced friction in the conversion process.
● On mobile, the effect can be even more pronounced. Convertica ran a 20-day test with a sticky CTA on a client’s landing page and saw a 252.9% increase in order completion rates for mobile users. This simple change kept the CTA accessible in a space where screen size limits the number of visible options, which shows how sticky elements can boost conversions when tailored to user behavior.
P.S. We explored the use of sticky menus, which function similarly to sticky CTAs, and found that they can enhance user engagement by providing constant access to navigation options. This increased engagement can lead to higher conversion rates, as users can more easily complete desired actions.
Ninsiima Rukandema: Marrying Qual and Quant Data To Meet Unmet User Needs
Ninsiima Rukandema, an Experimentation analyst at Hookflash, has been diving into the world of optimization, where she focuses on deriving insights that shape her team’s experimentation strategy. Although she’s been working in CRO for just eight months, Ninsiima’s approach stresses the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative data to guide impactful tests.
Ninsiima uses tools like Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, and Contentsquare for qualitative insights and GA4 for quantitative data. “It’s a sweet spot when these data sources work together,” she shares, noting that insights become “deep-rooted” and more actionable when multiple data perspectives align. For example, while GA4 data revealed the exhibitor page was the most visited on a client’s site, Microsoft Clarity showed that users were most engaged with individual exhibitor sections. This insight led Ninsiima’s team to optimize the journey by driving users directly to the ticketing page, enhancing the user flow based on clear behavioral data.
A particularly rewarding project involved interviewing a care provider’s users through Hotjar’s interviewing tool. Ninsiima and her team interviewed people who had previously hired carers, aiming to understand what worked well in their experience and what didn’t.
“Experimentation is totally cyclical. Data insights feed experimentation, and then the results from experiments feed further insights.”
Ninsiima Rukandema, Experimentation Analyst at Hookflash
“From the interview questions, it was clear that all of them prioritized companionship care in their search, but when scanning the website, it was not a need that was easily selectable,” she explains. This insight, along with a deeper understanding of the emotional state of users searching for care, informed tests that made the Companionship care option more prominent on the site and directly addressed user priorities.
Ninsiima’s interest in social behavior stems from her multicultural upbringing, having grown up in five different countries. This curiosity solidified during her Combined Honors in Social Sciences degree (covering Sociology, Geography, and Business), which led her to her role at Hookflash.
Over the last eight months, she has worked to identify optimization opportunities through a blend of behavioral analysis and data-driven insights, improving user experience while driving engagement.
Identifying unmet user needs is only the first step. The real challenge? Turning those insights into effective, testable changes—a phase known as the “messy middle” of A/B testing.
The “messy middle” is where you design interventions that address underlying user needs rather than surface-level issues. Here, frameworks like the ALARM protocol can help: this approach guides you through aligning insights with realistic and actionable test ideas.
Each test should be intentional, with treatments that are more than just minor adjustments. Instead, focus on interventions that meaningfully shift user behavior in ways that benefit both the user and the business.
Sumita Mukund: Implementing a Human-Centered Approach to CRO
Sumita Mukund, Conversion Strategist at The Good, draws on her technical background in computer science and front-end development and takes a human-centered approach to CRO. With a master’s in UX design and research, Sumita focuses on optimizing e-commerce experiences to be intuitive and user-focused, testing her insights with tools like Convert.
“Even when results don’t reach statistical significance, they uncover areas for improvement.”
Sumita Mukund, Conversion Strategist at The Good
In one standout project, Sumita implemented fit ratings for apparel and footwear clients, using customer reviews to show size accuracy on product pages. By displaying whether items were “true to size” or ran larger or smaller, these ratings gave shoppers confidence in their purchase decisions.
“Typically, we see strong results,” Sumita notes, adding that even when results don’t reach statistical significance, they uncover areas for improvement.
This strategy aligns with industry trends. Amazon, for instance, has introduced AI-driven features that summarize size accuracy and fit details from customer reviews to help shoppers find the right size and fit.
Another of Sumita’s projects involved testing the impact of product videos. A client wanted to find out if including videos on product pages would improve conversions, so Sumita temporarily hid the videos to measure the change. The results revealed that videos weren’t as effective as anticipated. But as a result, the client could redirect resources toward higher-impact areas.
Sumita also tested site-wide banners that communicate brand-wide benefits like free shipping, customer service, and seasonal promotions. By using these banners to highlight different messages throughout the year, Sumita helped introduce new visitors to the brand’s value proposition in a way that aligned with their needs.
Outside of work, Sumita is passionate about cooking, gardening, and, as she puts it, watching “anything that starts with ‘Real Housewives of…’”
Breaking The Conversion Ceiling in Experimentation: Want In?
From reshaping onboarding experiences to using data for deep, actionable insights, each of these women’s work goes beyond improving metrics—it’s about using empathy to create a meaningful user experience.
If you’re inspired to connect with more leaders making waves, Women in Experimentation (WiE) is a place to learn, collaborate, and get that “unfair” advantage by connecting with peers.
If you identify as female or non-binary, come say hello!
Written By
Sneh Ratna Choudhary, Trina Moitra
Edited By
Carmen Apostu
