I’m Justin Lai, a product leader based in San Francisco, CA.

What I’ve worked on:

• Building and shipping an NLP-based AI solution that analyzed 70,000+ survey responses to inform national unemployment insurance modernization across state workforce agencies

• Developing support-driven research methodologies to assist Californians applying for benefits, while developing research findings and insights to share with federal agencies

• Driving research within product teams to develop software for hard of hearing users

• Spearheading evaluative research for wheelchair users on autonomous vehicles

Currently:

I'm currently with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Information and Technology, where I lead product for the Advanced Health Insights (AHI) platform — VA's enterprise cloud analytics platform for clinical data — and own the DAMES (Data Analytics Measurement and Ecosystem Strategy) program, which combines data science and service design to improve veteran outcomes.

Previously:

Product Owner, Customer Experience Product Analytics - VA OIT (2024 - 2025)
Design Research Lead - U.S. Department of Labor (2022 - 2024)
UX Researcher - California Office of Digital Innovation (2020 - 2022)
UX Research Lead - SonicCloud (2018 - 2020)
Design Research Associate - Stanford Medicine X (2016 - 2018)

Education

Boston University School of Public Health - Health Policy and Management (MPH) (2016)
Loyola Marymount University - Studio Arts - Design (BA) (2014)