Sophie A. Kay, Ph.D.
People Analytics Research Scientist, Meta
Ph.D. area: Industrial Organizational Psychology
Graduated: Spring 2019
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Howard Weiss
"I came to Georgia Tech to study Industrial-Organizational Psychology. I left with deep research experience and advanced statistical training, but more importantly, with a perspective on what a psychology of the workplace should really be focused on. My advisor, Howard Weiss, called it person-centric work psychology: workers are whole people first, and their daily experiences at work are data worth taking seriously – not noise around productivity. That lens shapes my research every day as a People Analytics Research Scientist at Meta, and it quietly became the backbone of a second career I never planned: coaching. It started at Georgia Tech's Office of Leadership Education and Development, where I began coaching both students and student-run organizations. I loved connecting psychology as a science to supporting people in their day-to-day lives. That interest grew into an executive-function and leadership coaching practice I run alongside my day job. The two halves keep feeding each other: my psychology background gives my coaching a theoretical and empirical foundation, and coaching keeps my research honest about what people actually want and need at work. The same impulse to make my workplace and community better is what made me a founding member of PSY-COGS, Georgia Tech's Psychology Committee of Graduate Students — first as social chair, then as president for two years — and it's what keeps me on the boards of three nonprofits today. The mentors and colleagues I found at Tech gave me a standard I'm still chasing." Sophie A. Kay, Ph.D.
