Hello! I'm Kari Green — a vibrant, tenacious, and passionate person who loves working with data and advocating for customers. I currently work as a Product Manager at Momentive.ai (the maker of SurveyMonkey and Get Feedback).
I joined the Market Research pillar at Momentive in August of 2021, specifically as a part of the SurveyMonkey Audience team. I'm focused on our proprietary survey panels, SurveyMonkey Rewards and SurveyMonkey Contribute, ensuring our panelists have a world-class experience and in turn, deliver high-quality and actionable responses and insights to our customers.
My detailed knowledge of our systems from my prior role as a Quality Assurance Automation Engineer coupled with my rich technical background has given me the skills I've needed to excel in this new challenge. In the few months since I've joined the team, I've been able to drive huge impact. I've optimized third party partner integration logic which resulted in a 20% purchase conversion increase and 15% decrease in cost of revenue. I also enhanced survey distribution across panelists to increase user engagement 25% and decrease the proportion of poor quality responses by 1.5%.
As my career grows, I'm excited to develop a long-term strategy for the growth and engagement of our panels.
The skills I learned in my time as a medical researcher have been incredibly useful to my success in tech. I'm used to thinking about and working with complex data and I know how to prioritize based on the story the data tells.
From January of 2010 until January of 2018 I worked as a laboratory assistant at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute. I had the wonderful opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects related to language acquisition and hearing. I even had the opportunity to design and implement my own projects! Several of these projects have culminated in scientific presentations and publications.
Dietary supplements consisting of beta-carotene (precursor to vitamin A), vitamins C and E and the mineral magnesium (ACEMg) can be beneficial for reducing hearing loss due to aminoglycosides and overstimulation. This regimen also slowed progression of deafness for a boy with GJB2 (CONNEXIN 26) mutations. To assess the potential for treating GJB2 and other forms of hereditary hearing loss with ACEMg, we tested the influence of ACEMg on the cochlea and hearing of mouse models for two human mutations: GJB2, the leading cause of childhood deafness, and DIAPH3, a cause of auditory neuropathy. One group of mice modeling GJB2 (Gjb2-CKO) received ACEMg diet starting shortly after they were weaned (4 weeks) until 16 weeks of age. Another group of Gjb2-CKO mice received ACEMg in utero and after weaning. The ACEMg diet was given to mice modeling DIAPH3 (Diap3-Tg) after weaning (4 weeks) until 12 weeks of age. Control groups received food pellets without the ACEMg supplement. Hearing thresholds measured by auditory brainstem response were significantly better for Gjb2-CKO mice fed ACEMg than for the control diet group. In contrast, Diap3-Tg mice displayed worse thresholds than controls. These results indicate that ACEMg supplementation can influence the progression of genetic hearing loss.
Read MoreHair cells in the mature cochlea cannot spontaneously regenerate. One potential approach for restoring hair cells is stem cell therapy. However, when cells are transplanted into scala media (SM) of the cochlea, they promptly die due to the high potassium concentration. We previously described a method for conditioning the SM to make it more hospitable to implanted cells and showed that HeLa cells could survive for up to a week using this method. Here, we evaluated the survival of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) constitutively expressing GFP (H9 Cre-LoxP) in deaf guinea pig cochleae that were pre-conditioned to reduce potassium levels. GFP-positive cells could be detected in the cochlea for at least 7 days after the injection. The cells appeared spherical or irregularly shaped, and some were aggregated. Flushing SM with sodium caprate prior to transplantation resulted in a lower proportion of stem cells expressing the pluripotency marker Oct3/4 and increased cell survival. The data demonstrate that conditioning procedures aimed at transiently reducing the concentration of potassium in the SM facilitate survival of hESCs for at least one week. During this time window, additional procedures can be applied to initiate the differentiation of the implanted hESCs into new hair cells.
Read MoreFOXP2 is a transcription factor involved in gene regulation and neural plasticity. It is of particular interest as it was discovered as the first gene to have a relationship with the development of language. At Evolang IX, FOXP was shown to affect operant learning in Drosophila. This finding suggests that the development of language is a form of operant learning through vocal and auditory systems. I hypothesize that functional auditory and vocal systems, integrated via FOXP2, are required for a species to be able to access complex vocal language.
Read MoreWe have been treating cognitively unimpaired children with medical conditions that make them unable to vocalize in the normal timeframe. These conditions have included complete subglottic stenosis, laryngeal agenesis and vocal cord paralysis. To enable these children to speak, we have been developing surgical reconstruction procedures include cricotracheal resection, laryngotracheal reconstruction, slide tracheoplasty, tracheal splinting, laryngeal atresia repair and vocal cord reinnervation. Subsequent to these surgical procedures, patients were physiologically capable of vocalization, but were unable to make any voluntary laryngeal sounds. This inability to form even rudimentary noises was present despite many of the children having unimpaired cognition and age-typical receptive language skills. The development of speech in these children mirrors that seen in young infants with only vegetative laryngeal functions initially present followed by increasingly complex control: (1) Exclusively vegetative functions of the larynx; (2) Voluntary control over vegetative laryngeal functions; (3) Babbling; (4) Simple words; (5) Speech. These findings suggest that control of laryngeal function is a prerequisite for verbal protolanguage development. This laryngeal control can develop independently of language skills. Interestingly and unexpectedly, the rate of progression through the stages and subsequent acquisition of simple words and spoken language occurred independently of the number of signs that had been learned prior to surgery. These findings suggests that vocalizations and language develop independently and can be acquired separately. But it is through progressively sophisticated audio-vocal self-regulation that verbal protolanguage can develop.
Read MoreSeven previously aphonic children underwent airway reconstruction enabling them to obtain phonation for the first time between the ages of 13 and 34 months. Prior to surgical intervention, children had normal language exposure but expressive language was severely limited due to an inability to phonate. Spoken language development was accelerated, but still occurred step-wise with the following distinct periods after reconstruction: (1) Exclusively vegetative functions of the larynx; (2) Voluntary control over vegetative laryngeal functions; (3) Babbling; (4) Simple words; (5) Speech. These findings suggest that control of laryngeal function is a prerequisite for speech development and can develop independently of language skills. A similar pattern for the evolutionary development of speech is proposed.
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