My Job Is Analyzing and Improving People’s Work Lives

From her Hawai‘i home, Amazon researcher Natalie Perez uses interviews, focus groups, surveys and more to understand employee experiences across the globe.

Name: Natalie Perez
Job: Qualitative Research Scientist

Beginnings: Born and raised on O‘ahu, Natalie Perez lived on the North Shore before moving to ‘Ewa Beach when she was in second grade.

“Growing up I had never heard of qualitative research,” says Perez, who spent much of her childhood racing at the Kahuku Motocross Track in hopes of a career on the national circuit. But injuries over the years led her to give up that dream; she opted for college instead.

Lifelong Learning: Perez was entirely homeschooled before attending Windward and Leeward community colleges. She went on to UH West O‘ahu, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in humanities with concentrations in English and literature.

Then, while working toward a master’s degree in composition and rhetoric, she switched gears and earned a master’s and then a doctorate in learning design and technology.

“I just love learning. I’ll probably go back to school. I’m still really interested in law, botany, interior decorating,” Perez says. “I’ve decided I’m not going to have just one career but multiple careers over my lifetime and I’m excited about that.”

Path at Amazon: Perez held various roles at UH and was director of online teaching and learning at Honolulu Community College when a recruiter from Amazon reached out.

She started at Amazon as a senior instructional designer and researcher and now works as a qualitative research scientist.

“I work on a science team that is housed within human resources. The team is really focused on looking at our employee population and things related to human resources such as people’s working environments and employee experience.”

Specific Role: “My job is to design research studies aimed at being able to understand employees’ experiences about their work.”

She and her team collect information using interviews, focus groups, surveys, journals and diary studies – all with informed consent – “then take that data, analyze it and generate it into reports,” she says.

Those reports are shared with company leaders and used to improve employee experiences on the job and increase employee retention.

She finds the work meaningful and fulfilling. “People want their voices to be heard and I think that’s really important for organizations to be able to listen to their people.”

Global Connections: “One of the biggest challenges is time zones. It can be difficult trying to connect with people in the exact opposite time zone of mine. So it makes for some very early meetings and some late evening meetings.”

Motivation: Perez says the most exciting part of her job is constant exposure to new people, new places and new ways of thinking, working and living – all while mostly working from home on O‘ahu.

“I get to work with some incredibly brilliant and diverse people who live around the world … people in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific and just about every single country in between,” says Perez. And she says she gets to talk with them about Hawai‘i and its people and culture, and has the opportunity to travel too.

Keeping it Local: Perez says she sometimes misses the special atmosphere of our local work community, “but I’m so thankful to get to continue to be in the community and support local. I try to do things like different presentations with high schools and podcasts.”

Perez, a first-generation college student, says: “I really encourage students to go to school. As a little kid from ‘Ewa, I didn’t think I’d ever be in this role doing this work, but it’s totally feasible and possible.”