Thomas James Lodato

Work

Current

Product Lead — SMB Studio

2021 – Present

Building software for small businesses at a two-person studio in Portland. My role spans product definition, design, and hands-on code — often all in the same sprint.

Solo Grow — Managed marketing service for small businesses. Two-person team; my role spans product, design, internal tooling, and GTM.
Postful — Social media authoring and scheduling tool. Led the build from zero to launch; now in maintenance.
Local code assistant — Internal AI tool for the team. Built prior to Postful; shaped how we think about AI tooling.

Earlier explorations that shaped the product thinking: a data removal integration (Mozilla Monitor), a link in bio tool, and a shopping browser extension. Also served as experience design team lead across the studio's prior product lines.

Previous

Senior UX Researcher — Verizon Connect

2018 – 2021

Strategic and tactical research across consumer and commercial fleet management products. Work spanned foundational research, usability testing, and cross-functional collaboration with product and engineering teams.

Research Scientist — Georgia Institute of Technology

2014 – 2018

IPAT and Center for Urban Innovation. Research at the intersection of smart cities, civic technology, and the future of work. Projects included community-scale technology deployments and design research with municipal agencies.

PhD, Digital Media — Georgia Tech

2011 – 2016

Public Design Workshop. Dissertation on participatory design and civic technology. Research on UX in technology workplaces; taught interaction design and HCI.