Meet Our Team
Carol
Dr. Carol Righi is Co-Managing Director at TecEd Lighthouse, where she leads business development, client relations, and quality assurance of TecEd’s user experience projects. Carol has been a practitioner of UX research and design for more than 30 years, where she has created, evaluated, and improved user experiences for Web, mobile, desktop, kiosk, hardware, and mainframe applications for companies worldwide. She has been an instructor, manager, and business owner as well as a practitioner, and has built multiple UX teams across small, mid-sized, and large organizations. Her work has spanned domains including financial technology, healthcare, e-commerce, education, and many more. Her expertise includes both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
Carol is a widely-published thought leader and has presented her work at numerous conferences worldwide. She has innovated and deployed novel qualitative methodologies such as the 3×3, an early precursor to the design sprint. She is co-author of User-Centered Design Stories and User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach. Drawing on a foundation of psychology, statistics, and technology, she has been a pioneer of UX from its early days to present. Carol is the recipient of the 2023 UXPA Lifetime Achievement Award.
Carol is driven by a pragmatic yet rigorous application of UX research. Her focus on actionable recommendations derived from solid, applied research has helped her clients achieve desired outcomes across their most pressing product needs. She believes that every project must begin with a clearly articulated research question, only after which the methods and approach are selected to address it.
Vasilis
Dr. Vasileios (Vasilis) Kalyvis is Co-Managing Director at TecEd Lighthouse, where he leads user experience research projects. With six years of dedicated UX research experience, Vasilis has conducted studies for international brands including Nespresso, IKEA, Hertz, and Betsson, working with companies across the US, Greece, Malta, and beyond to deliver impactful insights that shape digital products. His research has directly driven multimillion-dollar conversion rate gains and cost savings for clients. His expertise spans qualitative and quantitative methodologies, with particular strength in product discovery and user segmentation.
His research career spans over two decades, with foundations in behavioral finance studies and doctoral research in the sociology of telemedicine, trust, and computer-mediated communications – disciplines that inform his approach to uncovering the human dynamics behind technology adoption and use. This depth of experience has enabled him to deliver actionable insights that drive product innovation.
Vasileios is guided by a core philosophy: technology should serve human beings, not the other way around. Through human-centric design and research, he ensures that every product decision is grounded in genuine human needs, behaviors, and outcomes that empower users and drive business success.
Stephanie Rosenbaum
Stephanie Rosenbaum is founder of TecEd, Inc. She is the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree of the User Experience Professionals’ Association, a senior member of the IEEE (formerly the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), member of ACM SIGCHI and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and Fellow and Exemplar of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). She was awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000 and received the Ken Rainey Award for distinguished research contributions from the STC in 2011. Stephanie’s academic research background includes anthropology studies at Columbia University and experimental psychology research for the University of California at Berkeley, from which she received an MA in the philosophy of language.
TecEd: A Legacy of User-Centered Innovation
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1967 — Stephanie Rosenbaum founded TecEd, pioneering understandable, task-based documentation for mainframe computer users when computers were first entering the business world.
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1970s — TecEd followed the evolution of computing from mainframes to minicomputers to microcomputers and laptops, creating documentation and other user assistance for Atari, Data General, Fairchild Semiconductors, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Tektronix, and many more.
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1980 — AI is exploding today, but it’s not new. TecEd wrote the documentation for the first expert system in daily production use in industry (Digital Equipment Corporation’s XCON, for eXpert CONfigurer).
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Early 1980s — When automotive companies began experimenting with onboard computers, TecEd wrote the documentation for Ford Motor Company’s first engine control microprocessor.
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Mid-1980s — Recognizing that even the best manuals couldn’t fix poorly designed systems, TecEd evolved its focus from documentation to human factors and user interface design, helping establish what would become the field of user experience.
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1986 — TecEd began writing user assistance for Cisco Systems when it had 25 employees (currently over 90,000 worldwide) and wrote the product overview that first used the term “cloud” to describe what Cisco called a “network of networks.”
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1988 — Stephanie was elected Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, “for leadership in combining the skills of business and technical communication.”
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1989 — Stephanie authored content for the first professional journal special issue dedicated to usability, positioning TecEd at the forefront of the emerging UX discipline.
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1991 — Stephanie became a charter member of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA, now UXPA) when the organization was founded, cementing TecEd’s commitment to the UX practitioner community.
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1995 — TecEd expanded into web and mobile product testing and design, beginning a 30-year partnership with over 200 Fortune 500 companies, startups, government agencies, and nonprofits.
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1998 — Stephanie received the Goldsmith Award from the IEEE Professional Communication Society “for distinguished contributions to engineering communication.”
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2000 — Stephanie was awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal in recognition of her contributions to the field.
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2005 — Carol Righi, longtime UX practitioner, began her long partnership with TecEd, serving as principal researcher for a Cisco Systems project. Carol would later engage in projects with Amazon, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other Fortune 500 companies.
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2011 — Stephanie received the Rainey Award for Excellence in Research from the Society for Technical Communication, which by that time had established a strong presence in the UX community.
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2022 — Stephanie received the UXPA Lifetime Achievement Award for founding the pioneering UX consultancy 55 years prior and “in recognition of her significant contributions to the user experience field.”
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2023 — Carol Righi received the UXPA Lifetime Achievement Award, exemplifying the company’s legacy of partnering with and mentoring industry leaders.
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2026 — TecEd transitions to new ownership under Carol Righi and Vasileios Kalyvis, its next generation of leadership, continuing its nearly 60-year tradition of user-centered excellence.