Dominique Cornelissen

Why this persona fits the audience

She leads customer insights for a SaaS scale-up and manages a 4-person research and analytics pod. She consolidates interview transcripts, survey verbatims, and dashboard snapshots into source-backed briefings for product and leadership.

• Age: 36
• Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Occupation: Customer insights lead
• Income: €88k
• Education: Master's in Psychology, specialization in Behavioral Science
• Company size: 50-200 employees (B2B SaaS scale-up)
• Years in role: 3

“I don't trust insights that couldn't stand up to scrutiny from our most skeptical customer - and honestly, neither should the product team.”

Dominique Cornelissen grew up in a house where dinner conversations revolved around behavioral case studies her parents brought home. This inborn curiosity led her to study psychology at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in behavioral science. After graduation, she worked at a market research consultancy where she developed a reputation for seeing through superficial survey responses to the messy human truths beneath. A move to a fintech startup gave her first exposure to SaaS research challenges, which she tackled with her signature blend of rigorous methodology and user empathy. Now as Customer Insights Lead at a fast-growing B2B scale-up, she's known for transforming raw customer feedback into actionable narratives that change product direction. Her ego is tied not to being 'right' but to helping teams make better decisions. Currently wrestling with how to maintain research quality as the company scales from 100 to 500 employees, she's experimenting with new frameworks for cross-functional insights sharing. Personally, Dominique values experiences over status symbols - her biggest splurge was a Rietveld-designed coffee table she found in a secondhand store. Financially, she lives below her means, investing in index funds and maintaining an 'exit portfolio' of freelance clients as a professional safety net. Her biggest time management challenge is guarding against 'research rabbit holes', though she's better now after implementing strict 90-minute focus blocks. Status-wise, she cares more about being invited to executive strategy sessions than about her own title or salary band. Recent career win: convincing leadership to fund a six-month longitudinal study on customer churn patterns, results of which will be presented at the next EU UX conference.

Background & daily life

A day in their life

Dominique's alarm sounds at 6:45am to her curated playlist of 90s Dutch indie pop. First ritual is making porridge with almond milk while checking her personal Slack (the insights pod uses it for async updates). By 8:00am she's in a café on Ceintuurbaan reviewing last night's automated survey responses. In the office (always the same standing desk with two monitors and a tray of 'emergency' dark chocolate), she devotes 2 hours to interviewing a power user of their product. Lunch is her only hard break - she reserves that for a solo walk in the Westerpark. Afternoons are for 'pattern hunting' in dashboard anomalies. She always ends the day with a 'knowledge dump' into her second brain (currently Obsidian, though she's contemplating a switch). Post-work, if not cycling, she'll be at the nearby Christiaan Bar, loudly arguing about data privacy ethics with her sociologist friend.

Lifestyle

Dominique rents a 75m² corner unit with exposed brick and a tiny balcony she's filled with potted herbs. Her routine includes a 8:30am commute by bike (no e-bike - 'Where's the challenge?') to the office, always packing a Spanx-sized lunch (usually tahini wraps and Dutch cheese). She avoids gyms but maintains strength through cycling and home workouts. Financially disciplined but makes exceptions for artisanal coffee and high-quality leather goods. Socially, she hosts a biweekly game night (Codenames, not poker) but limits work dinners to avoid blurring boundaries. Her cats, a grumpy Maine Coon and a high-energy Siamese, have their own Instagram she runs semi-reluctantly ('Fine, I'll document their food aggression for engagement').

Work life

Dominique manages a 4-person insights pod in a hybrid model (3 days onsite). Her team's work feeds directly into product roadmaps and leadership narratives. She spends mornings triaging customer feedback (current obsession: analyzing sentiment in support tickets for unspoken pain points) and afternoons synthesizing findings into 'snapshots' - visually clean but densely sourced slide decks. She dislikes vague briefs and developed a 'three-sources rule' for any claim in her reports. Current pressure point: balancing rapid MVP feedback with her preference for more granular studies. Uses Figma for presentation layouts, Otter.ai for interview transcription, and a personal Notion vault for tracking research gaps. Her biggest workplace joy is when engineering asks for 'the Dominique treatment' on a confusing UX flow.

Relationships

Dominique's immediate family lives in Utrecht - her parents are retired psychologists (her mother regularly critiques her methodology from 200km away) and she's the youngest of three siblings. Her closest friends are from university days - a sociologist and a product designer with whom she has monthly 'professional therapy' sessions at a favorite wine bar. At work, she's formidable but earns trust by remembering personal details about colleagues (she has a folder of handwritten notes about team members' career aspirations). Her cycling group becomes a substitute for romance ('Better this way - no messy overlaps').

How they decide

Research-heavy but timeboxed. Creates pros/cons matrices but ultimately trusts her pattern-recognition skills. Values peer input but needs to arrive at decisions independently. Dislikes binary choices, prefers to find 'third paths'.

How they sound

Speaks with deliberate pacing, using precise terminology in meetings but lapsing into colloquial Dutch during emotional moments ('da's een hele zotte situatie'). Uses 'literally' ironically about 3 times per hour. Avoids corporate jargon - 'synergy' makes her physically recoil. Her laughter is infectious but sudden, particularly when someone makes an unexpectedly sharp observation. You'll never hear her say 'just' or 'sorry' unnecessarily. When frustrated, she emphasizes words with a Dutch-English mix: 'This is tomato-tomahto level of misreading the data.'