My name is Niyati. I finished the MBDS program in the fall of 2021. Right before I graduated from the program, I got a job at Behavioralize, which is a consulting company that was founded by Jason Riis, who used to be a professor at Penn but decided to branch off and become a full-time consultant.
It's a small firm. It's just the three of us and him. Since we’re a behavioral science consulting company, we approach all of our client work with a BeSci lens. Our work is usually with large pharmaceutical companies but we take on other projects too. When I talk about BeSci, I feel like I’m always trying to explain the value we can bring, but pharma companies seem to get it. They understand behavioral science to a certain degree.
How did you start with Behavioralize?
They had reached out to the MBDS program and to let it be known that they were hiring. I was talking to the program coordinator about looking for a job, and she suggested that I apply. So, I reached out and applied. And it worked out. He was looking for someone to start right away and I had the ability to start right away because I was only taking like two classes. It's been like a year and a half now.
Why behavioral science?
When I finished college, I was very convinced that I was going to go into the public sector and work for the City of Philadelphia forever. I was speaking to a professor I was working with at the time and she really encouraged me to start doing informational interviews. Eventually, I ended up speaking to another professor who ultimately connected me with the City of Philadelphia’s Director of Policy. And so I chatted with her, which was very cool. At the time, she was running a behavioral science unit at the City of Philadelphia so she was telling me about the work they do. Probably a couple months later, it kind of all clicked. I realized that behavioral science was going to change how we deliver products and programs, and I just felt that it was going to be like such a big thing. Immediately afterwards, I just googled “behavioral science masters” and Penn was the first place that came up.
I know a lot of other people have read the books, and they were really inspired through the books. But that was not my experience. I’ve only really started reading the behavioral science books as I started working. In my case, I met someone who was doing the work, and I was really inspired.
Did you always know that you wanted to be a consultant?
When I applied to the program, I fully intended on going back and working in the public sector. I applied in January and you start in August. By the time I started the program, I was disillusioned a little bit. It's very hard to work for the city because you get all these great ideas, but it’s hard to implement and you often end up working on the same project for really long periods of time. So, by the time I started the program, I think I knew that I would rather get a job as a consultant because I wanted to work on different types of problems every couple of months, or different problems concurrently. Consulting is also never boring in my experience.
As a consultant, how do you incorporate behavioral science into work? What kind of method or framework of behavioral plan that you use?
We are a behavioral science consulting company. Jason, the founder, is a behavioral scientist, and everything we do involves behavioral science. We have our own internal framework based around misperceptions and inactions. But we also do follow a very general behavioral science process framework of doing lots of primary and secondary research, defining the problem really precisely, and then moving onto interventions. A colleague always mentions that a lot of work involves helping the client understand the context. There is a lot of upstream work in that primary and secondary research phase.
What is the focus of Behavioralize's work? Is it mainly on the problem-finding phase or the problem-solving phase?
While a lot of our work is about articulating the problem, we do problem-solving too. We provide clients with potential solutions that they can continue to build on. But the projects that I’ve been on are probably like 70% upstream and 30% downstream. But I think most people probably say the same thing. Most of the upstream work is thinking about the problem, and the solutioning, is later.
When you work with a client, do you work alone or do you work with somebody else at Behavioralize?
It depends on the project. Sometimes it's mostly me and Jason, sometimes it's with all of us.
How are behavioral sciences perceived by your clients?
A lot of times they seem to be really bought into it, at least from my point of view. A lot of our clients understand the value that it brings, but I don't know what goes on in the company as a whole. If our clients are working with us, they already believe in behavioral science to a certain extent. I don't know how that translates to people that the client has internally convinced or how those conversations go.
What is the biggest challenge that you have faced in terms of communicating and collaborating with cross-functional teams to integrate behavioral science?
Sometimes a challenge we face is getting the client to understand that behavioral science is a lot more than just popular nudges. When we think about behavioral science, we are thinking about the entire process; we're thinking about defining, diagnosing, and the research that goes into all the upstream stuff. They’re usually just thinking about downstream designing and maybe testing.
I should also mention that I definitely thought like this too before I started working at Behavioralize—once you start to do the work you realize the importance of the upstream stuff to get to good downstream things.
Earlier, you mentioned that consulting involves working on different problems and industries. Could you elaborate on what you find most fulfilling about being a behavioral science consultant?
I find it fulfilling to see how behavioral science is spreading beyond just nudges and simple solutions for specific problems. It's about taking a holistic approach to problems through a lens of behavioral science. Helping clients think about problems in this way has been very rewarding.
It’s also just been professionally fulfilling to work in different sectors and think about different problems on a daily basis.
How do you stay updated with research and new insights in behavioral science?
I try to read a behavioral science book a month. I subscribe to behavioral science newsletters like Habit Weekly and Behavioral Scientist so I do see some stuff that comes up through there. Everyone has told me that Twitter is where the behavioral science conversation is happening. LinkedIn is also pretty good, but I’m not particularly good at either. Podcasts are also a good way to stay up-to-date but because I work from home, I never know when to listen to them. I feel like people listen to podcasts when they're driving or commuting, and I'm just not doing that. But it's certainly something I think about in terms of how to stay on top of things.
Temptation bundling?
I've tried temptation bundling! I'm constantly trying to Behavioral Science myself.
I really want to walk more so I was trying to think about what I can bundle with that. I tried audiobooks, which didn’t really work for me. I very embarrassingly got a TikTok remote so I could put the phone up and just press a button to swipe to the next video. I haven’t used it yet because I’m waiting for a fresh start, but fingers crossed.
Are there any topics or any research areas in behavioral science that you are interested in?
Recently I've been very interested in the study of regret.
Daniel Pink?
Exactly! The power of regret. I read that book in January, and it's very fascinating. But I haven't done any extra research on top of it. It's just a very interesting field to me, regret and impostor syndrome because I think everyone experiences it at some point. I'm constantly trying to minimize regret, and it takes so much out of you. You just have to come to terms with it. You're just trying to do it the best you can.
What is your aspiration?
Professionally, I’m not sure what my next step will be. I don't know if I would want another consulting job or if I'd want to do internal consulting for a company. Both have their own pros and cons. Or maybe I’ll just get a different job and then just apply behavioral science through that lens. I’m not sure yet!
At this time, we are quite early in our career. If you don't know something and you know that you don't know, that is a good start.
That's a good way to think about it, because I think at certain points I feel like I'm so behind, but I've only been doing this for two years. But you’re right, we're still early in our career, and we’re learning.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who started their career, based on either your personal or professional experience?
I would suggest reading a lot of the behavioral science books. I’ve learned so much just through reading. It’s been fun to read a book and then be able to directly apply something from that book to a project I was doing at the time.
Be open to different jobs and don’t try to be overly specific on what exact job or role you want. Wherever you end up, you’ll learn a lot, which is the most important thing.
And this isn’t really career advice, but I wish I started applying behavioral science to my own life earlier. Figure out how to write really specific goals. Figure out how to temptation bundle. Figure out how to create habits. It has taken me a long time to really think about how to use all the stuff that we know about behavioral science in my own life, but it’s definitely really helped me.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Niyati and I had this chat on 03/01/2023.
You can connect with her on her Linkedin
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