Uma Ramanathan

Experience

About 15 years across product, UX, data and consulting, working directly with client stakeholders from discovery through delivery. Real client work first, with case studies attached.

1. 2018 – Present

   Founder & Artist

   Ksara Decor·Art studio and webshop·www.ksaradecor.com

   An ongoing sustainable-gifting business built on my original concept, Through The Glass Artly: rescued glass bottles hand-painted with marine life, offered as ocean-conservation talking pieces for personal and CSR (corporate social responsibility) gifting.

   • Own the business end to end: concept, brand, artwork, positioning and customer experience.

   Key achievements

   • Built and launched the webshop end to end with AI in one month, including an admin console to upload and categorise the catalogue, with orders flowing direct to WhatsApp.
   • Run the platform end to end: hosting, admin, site updates, and a separate test site to validate changes before release.
   • ~15 pieces created for client souvenirs and corporate gifting.
   • Art-for-services partnership with the Bay of Life ocean-sports team: a dozen pieces exchanged for surf training.

   Entrepreneurship · Brand Strategy · CSR Gifting · D2C · AI-assisted Build · Hosting & Site Operations · Ocean Conservation

   • www.ksaradecor.com↗ Browse the collection and order direct via WhatsApp. Live·Built with AI
2. 2021 – Present

   Founder (Concept stage)

   PetMe·Pet care for mental wellbeing·India

   A care plan that goes into a new pet’s calendar from the day of adoption, so a pet supports its owner’s wellbeing instead of adding to their worries. Adopt with confidence. Keep them for life.

   • Own the idea end to end: problem, product, positioning and business model.

   Key achievements

   • Designed the original UX concept and an interactive mobile prototype.
   • Built a founder pitch with sourced India–USA market research, competitor analysis and a business model.
   • Now looking for a co-founder, impact-focused incubators and mentors to run a first pilot.

   Product Vision · Founder Pitch · Market Research · Business Model Design · Rapid Prototyping with Figma · Social Impact

   • PetMe — Founder pitch→ The pitch, the prototype, and what I’m looking for. Concept·Pitch·Prototype
3. Jan 2024 – Jan 2025

   M.Sc. Business Analytics & Consulting

   University of Strathclyde Business School·United Kingdom·Distinction

   Consulting engagements with real organisations, run as part of the programme.

   • Performance Management System — NSAR→ Designed six pathway-specific logic models, a metric hierarchy, and a live funding-ask SROI tool connecting Arctic search-and-rescue activities to outcomes. Client·NSAR Project Team·Oct–Dec 2024·Org design · Logic models · Metrics
   • Digital Retail Bank Launch Strategy→ Ran a BaaS vendor evaluation and go-to-market strategy for a US bank's first digital retail launch in the UK. With Synpulse Consulting·2024·Consulting · GTM · Banking
   • District Heating Networks Advisory→ Proposed governance, prioritization, and investment-appraisal frameworks to accelerate Glasgow's district heating rollout toward Net Zero. With Sustainable Glasgow and Partners·Aug–Sep 2024·Strategic advisory · MCDA · Governance
   • Haggis Hopper Taxi Business Insights→ Mapped Glasgow taxi demand by hour and postcode, and validated pricing against 3,068 real trips. With Kin Karta Consulting·2024·Tableau · Forecasting · Python
4. Sep 2024

   Pro bono data analysis project

   Via Byteforza·For a US-based founder·Remote

   A one-off, unpaid analysis for a US founder studying home mortgage lending across US banks, who needed to see whether loans concentrated unfairly by geography or race, which a state-level total couldn’t show.

   • Loan Distribution Dashboard - Fairness Equity Analysis→ Built a Tableau workbook drilling from state to county to census tract, filterable by race, bank and year at every level, using US Census shapefiles. Pro bono·Sep 2024·Tableau · US census data · Spatial analytics
5. May 2021 – Jun 2021

   Product Design, UX & Strategy (Independent Freelance)

   NoMoBo·San Diego, USA (Remote)

   NoMoBo, the client’s app development partner for its digital transformation, needed field assessors to complete compliance inspections at remote sites with no network, replacing paper notes retyped days later.

   • Owned product design and solutioning end to end with NoMoBo’s developers, from research and journey mapping to an interactive prototype.

   Key achievements

   • Redesigned the field assessment workflow as offline-first, adding auto-save and draft recovery across mobile, iPad and desktop.
   • Took the design from research and journey maps through low-to-high fidelity mockups to a built, interactive Figma prototype.

   UX Research · Journey Mapping · Rapid Prototyping with Figma · Interaction Design · Stakeholder Feedback

   • Field Assessment — Offline-first Mobile Workflow→ Led end-to-end product and UX solutioning for an offline-first field-assessment product serving 100+ users, from discovery through prototyping, interaction design and engineering handoff. Client·Case study·UX Research · Journey Mapping · Rapid Prototyping · KPI Design · Adoption Metrics · Figma · Engineering Handoff
6. May 2021 – Nov 2021

   Product Manager (Independent Freelance)

   NoMoBo·San Diego, USA (Remote)

   • Scoped the MVP redesign from the product side, turning field pain points into requirements and success measures.

   Key achievements

   • Wrote the MVP business case and requirements for the redesign, serving 100+ field users, handed off to engineering.
   • Defined 3 success KPIs (time-to-value, time-to-completion, adoption-retention), targeting a 2.6× lift in field completion (21% → 55%) and 55% faster first submission (62 → 28 min).
   • Delivered a follow-on adoption and retention measurement framework to the client: a 6-stage activation funnel, weekly tracking of 3 core features, and a 90-day retention model.

   Product Strategy · Business Case · Requirements · KPI Design · Activation & Retention Metrics · Stakeholder Management

   • Field Assessment — Adoption & Retention Tracking→ Activation funnel, feature-adoption tracking and 90-day retention model to prove offline mode was used and gains would last. Modelled: 4× activation, 3.8× retention. Client·Follow-on·Modelled figures·Funnel analysis · Retention modelling
7. 2019 – 2021

   Volunteering and independent consulting

8. 2016 – 2018

   Career break

9. Oct 2015 – May 2016

   Data Architect

   Cognizant Technology Solutions·India

   Data governance best practice initiative for a healthcare client, protecting sensitive data across enterprise systems.

   • Supported Cognizant’s Data Governance practice in evaluating data protection and masking controls.

   Key achievements

   • Benchmarked 4 data masking approaches on integration complexity and security, narrowing to one recommendation that scored 25% higher than the initial candidates.
   • Designed and tested a dynamic data masking proof of concept, targeting a 30% reduction in sensitive-data exposure risk versus manual masking.

   SQL · Excel · Data Governance · Data Masking · Metadata Management · Informatica ETL

10. Oct 2012 – Jul 2015

    Assistant Consultant

    Royal Bank of Scotland via Tata Consultancy Services, Banking & Financial Services·India

    Data architecture, analytics and masking for the bank’s data warehouse and analytics layer, where sensitive customer fields reached reports without role-based protection.

    • Owned the data architecture and masking design in a 4-person pilot team, working with client and engineering stakeholders.

    Key achievements

    • Produced data flow diagrams, source-to-target mappings and a data dictionary, tracing every sensitive field from source to report.
    • Profiled reports and source tables to quantify sensitive-data exposure, setting the baseline for the masking target.
    • Delivered a role-based masking proof of concept on Informatica Lifecycle Management, targeting a 45% reduction in sensitive-data exposure risk.

    Data Architecture · Data Lineage · Data Profiling · Data Warehousing · BI · SQL · Data Masking · Data Governance · Informatica (Lifecycle Management) · Stakeholder Management

11. Dec 2010 – Sep 2012

    Senior Associate – PMO Dashboard Lead

    Cognizant Technology Solutions·India

    Manual, ITIL-based program health tracking was slow and repetitive; the PMO needed self-service visibility into program health.

    • Led a team of 4 in the PMO, owning the program-tracking and reporting tooling from requirements and metric definition through build.

    Key achievements

    • Built a maturity-tracking dashboard that turned a manual, activity-heavy reporting process into a KPI-driven view of program health.
    • Defined an ITIL-aligned Project Maturity Assessment framework, giving leadership an independent, portfolio-wide view of project health beyond milestone tracking.
    • Architected a custom .NET web application on SQL Server for questionnaire capture and leadership dashboard reporting.

    Project Management · ITIL · Requirements Gathering · .NET · SQL Server · Dashboard Design · Stakeholder Management

12. Apr 2010 – Sep 2010

    Consultant

    Maltem Consulting·Singapore

13. Apr 2008 – Nov 2009

    Software Developer

    Deyaar Properties, a Dubai-based real estate developer·UAE

    In-house IT team supporting the company’s cross-functional operations with .NET applications and Oracle reporting.

    • Developed and maintained .NET applications and Oracle reporting in a 5+ person IT team, including database modelling for operations teams.

    Key achievements

    • Built a .NET and Excel reconciliation tool for a data migration pilot, validating ~50,000 records across 9 tables, finding a ~2% discrepancy rate and cutting reconciliation effort by ~70%.

    SQL · Data Modelling · Data Migration · .NET · Oracle

14. Sep 2007 – Mar 2008

    Consultant

    Merrill Lynch India Tech·India

15. Jun 2004 – Aug 2007

    Senior Functional Analyst

    iSOFT R&D, a healthcare IT scale-up·India

    Product discovery of legacy applications for Lorenzo, a large-scale SOA-based healthcare information system deployed across NHS and international hospital networks.

    • Business-to-development liaison within a 5+ person concept delivery team, working with clinical, technical and operational stakeholders.

    Key achievements

    • Ran discovery workshops and user research to surface clinical pain points in legacy applications.
    • Designed screens and interaction flows that turned ambiguous clinical needs into validated prototypes, reducing downstream delivery effort by 25%.

    Discovery Workshops · User Research · Interaction Design · Requirements Definition · Stakeholder Liaison

Projects

Case studies, prototypes and live builds, grouped by discipline. Pick one to narrow the list.

Expertise & Toolkit

Product & consulting

Discovery, product design including 0→1, continuous improvement, data and UX; strategy: competitor analysis, UX-led adoption, KPI design and prioritisation frameworks; rapid prototyping with Figma and AI creator tools (Lovable, Emergent, Replit, Claude Code)

AI & automation

AI prototyping with industry tools, LLMs, GenAI, no-code automation (n8n, Zapier), Excel, agentic workflows, building AI into my own workflow (Claude Code, Cursor, Notion) to amplify productivity

Strategy & AI opportunities

Identifying AI opportunities, process optimisation using AI and UX, UX-led product adoption roadmaps

Domains

Data migration, governance and quality in banking and healthcare; payments and UPI (working knowledge); back-office process redesign

Data & languages

Python, SQL, BigQuery

Data analysis & data science

Predictive modelling, forecasting, statistical testing, spatial analysis, decision models (MCDA, SROI)

Visualisation & BI

Tableau, Excel, Python visualisation libraries

Collaboration

Miro, Slack, flexible across time zones