who's in charge here?

Fearless Leader indeed – though, to be clear, she bears no resemblance to the principal antagonist in the 1960s animated series. Kristin is fearless when challenging the status quo and forging brave new business territories. And without question, she is an inspiring and gifted organizational leader. It’s no wonder. This McLean, Virginia native spent 13 years at Procter & Gamble in both marketing and research roles and left as a Director after leading teams of 50+ individuals, managing research budgets in excess of $30 million, earning a reputation as a turnaround maven, and deeply impacting a broader market research organization of nearly 1,000 members. She has held CEO and Global COO posts at Ipsos and Kantar TNS in both the US and the UK, is passionately client-centric, and steadfastly believes in the transformative power of timely business intelligence.

It’s not clear if her MBA from Georgetown University has anything to do with her ability to solve a Rubik’s cube with preternatural speed, but her spatial intelligence and problem-solving skills have helped more than a few clients. Ask her if she likes to cook and she’ll tell you it’s an onerous chore best left to others. She’d rather read voraciously, immerse herself in new technology, captain a sailboat off the coast of Africa, and maintain her ‘global citizen’ status (as well as her fluency in Japanese). And like her co-founders, Kristin is on a mission to transform the market research industry.

A rolling stone gathers no moss, they say. Stagnancy? Not even part of her vocabulary. But if Ali’s picked up anything over the course of her career, it’s momentum. And an unwavering belief that getting the right information into the hands of her clients has the power to inspire brilliance. A self-proclaimed Brand Junkie, Ali’s career has spanned market research, advertising, brand consulting, and marketing in the US and the UK for companies that include TNS, Ipsos, Foot Cone & Belding Advertising, The Kroger Company, Deskey, and Chiquita Brands International. She waxes poetic when recounting work for powerhouse brands such as Disney, Starbucks, Target, Microsoft, L’Oréal, eBay, and Lyft. She obsesses over storytelling and data visualization. She wryly admits she’s spent more money moving her cat across continents than moving herself, but figures there are far worse extravagances to be guilty of. (Like, say, exceeding her goal of visiting 20 distinct countries in a single year.)

And after a successful career helping inspire global brands, doggedly chasing piercing insights, and turning around troubled businesses, Ali revels in her role as CMO – where in addition to leading research she is responsible for the development of Mizzouri’s promise, offer, reputation, and unique customer experience. She is also the CEO of Zografia, Mizzouri’s full-service graphic design firm. All rumours that she’s also the company prankster are grossly exaggerated.

A quiet but powerful leader, Kim and her passion for the market research industry – and its reinvention – have inspired clients, her organizations, and agencies alike for more than 35 years. Hers is a mantra of quality. Of meaningful innovation. And of business impact. Over the course of her storied 30 years at Procter & Gamble, Kim delivered that impact to countless billion-dollar brands. She was one of the architects of the company’s Consumer & Market Knowledge organization, for which she was the global Vice President for seven years. And those who know Kim will tell you that her unparalleled dedication to growing and mentoring top talent has fundamentally changed the lives of those around her. (Not surprisingly, then, she galvanized a global account director programme that spanned 13 operating companies at Kantar, where she served as Chair of the Americas.) But don’t say we didn’t warn you. Kim’s demeanor belies a fiercely competitive nature – and she’ll gladly challenge you to a “friendly” game of HORSE in the driveway. This foodie and avid reader also speaks Spanish and French. And while she’s often tagged as “reliable,” we have it on good authority that Kim is not to be trusted to keep the canoe you’re sharing upright.

We love an over-achiever, especially when Innovation is her middle name. A Baltimore, Maryland native, Jill leveraged a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.B.A. in Marketing & International Business to launch an impressive career – one that includes a 13-year stint at Procter & Gamble. When she left P&G, she had held senior North American and Global Consumer & Market Knowledge roles for multi-billion-dollar brands such as Tide, Gain, Downy, Always, and Tampax. But Jill started in Research & Development, where her innovations for brands such as Old Spice, Secret, and Sure keep us all smelling great under pressure. The packaging evaluation and optimization tool she helped create for Mizzouri (a big data beauty complete with conjoint, heat mapping, and large base qualitative) is Patent Pending.

“Bah!” she says; “That’s nothing compared to moving a family of five to Geneva” – where, we might add, we know for a fact she used her Chemical Engineering background to concoct dubious new recipes for her five young children. Her parents say she was stubborn as a kid. Jill contends that she simply wielded a titanic level of perseverance. You say tomato, we say…

Sam was one of the first to raise her hand to say, “Guys, the world is changing so quickly that the market research industry is struggling to keep up. Really struggling.” She should know. She’s led teams from 10 to 400 in the industry, and she’s watched firsthand as external suppliers have stumbled – some never getting back up. But Sam’s a change agent, and she has mastered the art of driving client value over the course of her career at companies that include Ipsos, Kantar TNS, and Schlesinger Associates. To be fair, we take a certain pleasure in knowing that this small-town gal born in London, Kentucky moved to London, England (with three young children and a husband in tow, mind you) to help one of our founders turn around a troubled UK business. But we quickly give way to admiration. Because upon arriving on foreign soil with her brood, Sam discovered they’d have to spend more than a week with the five of them sleeping on one twin-size air mattress until they figured out how to take the train to IKEA. “Oh, that’s nothing. It was a great adventure and taught us that the important thing isn’t stuff, it’s spending time together.” To which we say, CHEERS!

Tim is the latest thing in conjoint. Actually, we think he’s the only thing in conjoint. We get giddy when he talks about price elasticity. And we practically swoon when he quips about Hierarchical Bayes estimation. Tim has one of those brains that we adore – and are a little afraid of. He has deep experience in marketing research statistics, including discrete choice design, analysis and simulators, segmentation, forecasting, and multidimensional scaling and correspondence maps. And he’s applied his brilliance to business problems for clients in every sector imaginable, from media and entertainment to lotteries and gaming to packaged goods and everything in between. Just for fun we asked this award-winning photographer what he did last weekend. “Ah, I just wrote a little SAS IML code to estimate a new kind of choice model with the Gibbs sampler.” That Tim. He’s such a joker.

Christian joined Mizzouri after an inspiring 18-year career at Procter & Gamble, where he helped us all stay clean (and blissfully free of dust bunnies) thanks to his work launching Swiffer and his leadership on Tide, Pantene, Dawn, Lenor, Cascade, Iams, Ariel, and a host of other brands in the US, Belgium, and Switzerland. He has also lived in Singapore and Sweden, and this global explorer is addicted to podcasts like Stuff You Should Know, Radiolab, and Freakonomics. He’s like that. He treats his brain like a toolbox that he fills with random and seldom-used tools that will surely come in handy someday – and as it turns out, he’s gifted at pulling disparate but critical bits of information together for clients. We joke that he’s the Google engine of Mizzouri. Except that he does far more than just serve up answers. He serves up compelling business recommendations.

What’s the first word that comes to mind when we think of Stef? Brave. This renaissance woman spent 20 years in consumer insights at Procter & Gamble before joining Mizzouri – and on many occasions was the first (and only) to see an impending business issue and then fix it in a brave way. Her elegantly simple solutions have consistently delivered major results: doubling sales in one instance, turning around a five-year penetration decline in another…the stories are as consistent as they are numerous. Stef will be the first to tell you that research should be brave, even if that means asking questions we’ve never asked before because business growth always follows. Or as she puts it, there’s nothing to fear, and everything to gain. Born in East Germany near the Baltic Sea, Stef has lived and worked in Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, and the UK. (She also happens to be fluent in German, English, and French and loosely conversant in Russian and Spanish. We’re going to work on her Pig Latin next.) Stef is also hysterically funny – though by her own admission, her sense of humour is often misunderstood. Which is why her friends and family ask her to make a W sign with her hands (witz being the German word for joke) before she launches into something “funny”.

Over the course of her six-year career at Procter & Gamble, Lauren didn’t just master brand-building fundamentals, learning plan development and execution, qualitative, and quantitative methodologies such as market mix modeling, in-store marketing testing, and media effectiveness tracking. She also leveraged her shopper expertise to lead adoption and deployment of a First Moment of Truth tool in North America that has helped P&G deliver with excellence in-store. And she rounded out her extensive work in P&G’s coffee and dish care categories by leading the company’s largest multi-brand effort at the 2012 London Olympics.

We expect a driven researcher like Lauren to be an over-achiever in all aspects of her life, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint. This mother of four, marathon runner, and certified yoga instructor has also trained and certified one of her dogs as a Therapy Dog. But for Lauren, all roads lead back to market research. Her husband is in market research (as are the majority of her friends), so dinnertime conversations often revolve around anticipated Purchase Intent lift based on optimized POS materials. What a rebel.

Beth is one of those rare creatures who’s just as comfortable on the left side of her brain as the right. She’s an experienced moderator, brand strategist, facilitator, and storyteller who also happens to be an expert working with scanner data and conjoint models. Beth spent eight years as the Vice President of Research and Analytics for Interbrand and four years as the VP of Innovation & Strategy at Ipsos. As a result, there are very few business questions she can’t find a way to answer. And even fewer answers that she can’t render in a beautiful, elegantly simple way – which she’s done for clients such as Bank of America, Visa, Microsoft, Starbucks, Walmart, Procter & Gamble, and John Deere. Yes, John Deere.

And while Beth runs marathons, plays tennis, and tortures herself with innumerable types of exercise at the gym, she is (by her own admission) a bit of a klutz. So, we’re never quite sure who’s going to win: Beth or the weight machines. Given the number of cuts, bruises, and black eyes we’ve seen over the years, we suspect the odds are statistically in favour of the machines.

Jennifer wields over 19 years of consumer insights and market research experience. She’s also an innovation junkie: ideation and front-end work, qualification, go-to-market strategy development, customer sell-in, portfolio management… Let’s just say she caught the innovation bug early and never let it go. She was famous at Procter & Gamble for taking on unpopular roles – diamonds in the rough, Jennifer would say – and turning them into wonderful roles. This isn’t surprising given that she loves to solve problems that beg for custom solutions. At P&G, she held North American and global roles in the US and Latin American roles while living in Panama.

This renaissance woman is a perennial surprise outside the office, too. Her urban farm features chickens and honeybees. She’s been known to hike pyramids with a toddler strapped to her back. And her party-planning prowess is legendary, spanning everything from Cupcake Wars to Cabernet-on-the-Curb gatherings. Yes, definitely Mizzouri material.

There are few things Carolina is more passionate about than translating data into insights, simplifying thinking to focus on what matters, and crafting stories that enable decision making. And she did it for more than 13 years at Procter & Gamble in both her native Caracas and London before joining Mizzouri. She wields strong technical research mastery as well as analytical and problem-solving skills – all of which make her lethally effective when it comes to category growth, brand building, shopper-based design, and data integration. Many of our running jokes revolve around her innocent language gaffes, and Carolina quips that often feels like Sofía Vergara on Modern Family. But nobody can throw a party like Carolina, who deftly channels her inner Martha Stewart (sans the insider trading scandal, of course).

Heather has done some pretty amazing things over the course of her 15-year market research career that got its start at Research International. She was one of the earliest employees at Priceline, and in her Director of Planning and Forecasting role she developed the forecasting tool for the company’s travel businesses – a model that Priceline used throughout its IPO and beyond. Clearly, the deep end doesn’t scare Heather. Give her a high-change, high-growth situation where she can have a tangible impact on the business and she’s a happy woman indeed. Her client list, which includes companies such as eBay, Yelp, and Groupon, is evidence of that mindset.

And all that desire for impact bleeds into Heather’s personal life, where she’s active at her children’s schools and with non-profit Cul2vate, which helps bring fresh produce to hungry families in Nashville. It’s frustratingly hard to find anything to tease her about. But then again, there was that time when Heather had to be rescued from the top of her toilet, where she’d been trapped for hours by a mouse on the floor that turned out to be nothing more than a tassel from her slipper.

Anouk is a behavioural scientist with more than 18 years of experience in both industry and academia market research – not surprising given she has a PhD in Behavioural Science, a master’s degree in Decision Sciences, and a BA in Cognitive Psychology. She obsesses over human-centred AI, the influence of technology on consumer behaviour, and emergence of new methods in data analytics. And she’s brought her passions to life when working for companies such as Procter & Gamble, Coty, and most recently as Director of Consumer Insights and Analytics at Wella. She’s keen to understand how new data sources and research approaches can be used to complement traditional market research – all because she wants to help her clients develop an intuitive understanding of human behaviour and empathize with their consumers to design superior products and experiences for them.

When she’s not connecting the dots and combining different data sources, you’ll find her in the mountains. She grew up in a ski resort in the Swiss Alps and loves skiing, hiking, and running. She has lived in the US and the UK, too, but is delighted to enable her kids to grow up in an area that’s so connected to nature. She also wryly admits that in addition to her ability to revive dead house plants and bake sourdough bread, she’s quite skilled at building Legos and assembling IKEA furniture.

Maria Antonietta Costantino – whom we affectionately call MAC – joined Mizzouri with an impressive pedigree. Most recently she was the leader of consumer health consulting, market research, and analytics at IQVIA in Milan, where she developed global brand strategies, analyzed macro and micro market trends, developed consumer segmentation and marketing strategies, identified optimal shelf design, and uncovered the consumer journey. And she did this type of work for clients such as Sanofi, Alfasigma, Perrigo, J&J, Beiersdorf, Nestlé, Google, and others. But even more impressive are the 29 years she spent at P&G in Rome and Geneva leading global growth strategies and top EMEA initiatives, where she developed and executed game-changing growth strategies in Fabric Care, Oral Care, and other categories. To say that MAC is fanatical about strategy, insights, and brand growth is an understatement.

She holds a master’s degree in Human Biological Sciences as well as a lllooonnnngggg list of advanced training courses and certifications. Where will you find her in her free time? Running around the best places of ancient Rome (the Coliseum or the Appian Way, for example) or at her beach house, where her passion is to renovate and decorate. Well, when she’s not lying on the sand, of course. Equally impressive is the fact that she and her dog are training to do search and rescue missions, and she’s just been accepted for an advanced, multi-year training program. We’re all feeling a bit in awe…

Jaime wields 20 years of international experience in FMCG, food and beverage, and pharma working in R&D, market research, consumer insights, and marketing roles. During his 14 years with Procter & Gamble, he held several roles in multiple locations, including shopper marketing in Madrid, consumer insights in Geneva and Madrid, and R&D in Brussels. He served as Consumer Business Intelligence leader for Southern Europe for Johnson & Johnson working on the company’s top OTC brands as well as Neutrogena and Listerine. Jaime also continues his nine-year run teaching consumer behaviour topics for MBA and executive programs at the top international IE business school, where he acts as Academic Director for Masters in Market Research and Consumer Behaviour.

A native of Galicia, Jaime speaks fluent Galician, Spanish, and English and leverages basic fluency in French, Portuguese, and German. A very proud father of two, he’s most likely to be found playing with them (or playing badminton). Alternatively, you might find him on Spanish national radio explaining and predicting consumer behaviour changes, such as during the COVID pandemic. While the nation clearly understands he’s an expert, we think it’s hilarious that the running joke in his family is that nobody really understands what he does as a researcher – and the prevailing myths are that he’s the guy who spies on people when they buy groceries or the guy who works in a factory making Johnson’s Baby Shampoo.

Sandra is a dynamic leader with much experience in senior roles overseeing global markets, consumer products, and retail strategies through the lenses of market research, marketing, and sales. Most recently she was the Director of Consumer Analytics for Manor AG headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. While there she led the consumer insights and data science team to achieve a step change in consumer and competitive intelligence by redefining their framework of research, CRM analytics, and reporting. She worked closely with Beauty partners L’Oréal and Sephora to identify consumer paths to purchase, understand key purchase drivers, and optimize claims. Sandra also spent 14 years with Procter & Gamble in both Switzerland and Germany, where her work on Global Haircare kept us all looking great. In fact, her work on Pantene, Braun Beauty Appliances, and Braun Household Appliances earned her several awards, including the P&G Gold Award, the P&G Insight Award, and the P&G Recognition Share Award.

Sandra holds both a PhD and master’s degree in economics – which humbles all of us (along with the fact that she’s fluent in English, German, and French). And while she was born in western Germany and held several positions there over the course of her career, she ultimately moved to Switzerland for a new role and stayed – this time for love. She continues to reside in Geneva with her Swiss-French-German family, where, for the record, one of her favourite activities is dancing. (She’s even taken salsa classes.) But what we love is that she and her daughter regularly do YouTube dance workouts at home. Oh, to see that!

Sarah is one of those people we don’t come across very often: a master researcher who spent 14 years as an intrapreneur at Procter & Gamble. And without question, spending that much time in rarified upstream air for brands such as Pantene, Olay, Gillette, and Tide honed skills that so many of our clients need as they tackle innovation: new product development, business model creation, opportunity mapping, and delivery of consumer “wow”. Sarah is happiest when she’s creating breakthrough approaches to identify disruptive product and service ideas – and she’s just as comfortable in durable goods and healthcare as she is in consumer packaged goods. She’s also a highly creative and prolific writer and has been an Elite Yelper for more than five years. All of which leaves us scratching our heads. How is it possible that someone who can so clearly see the path to business success has such a notoriously poor sense of direction? Suffice it to say that we’re in charge of the maps on business trips.

There are very few researchers who can say that their consumer insight generation work helped a brand launch from scratch and quickly capture the greatest share in the category. Lena can. Over the course of her 18-year career with Procter & Gamble in Greater China she has led market research initiatives in Laundry, Skin Care, Beauty Care, and Fem Care – and now boasts 10+ years of skincare experience in China. She leverages her expert quantitative and qualitative skills to round out her research findings and help clients succeed in this critical business market.

Imogen leverages more than 19 years of experience in market research and brand planning, and her career spans agencies including Hall & Partners London and TNS. Like all of us at Mizzouri, Imogen is particularly fond of wrapping her mind around big, strategic questions – something she’s done for clients like eBay, BBC Worldwide, SCJ, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, and GSK. Not surprisingly, Imogen is no stranger to global research, and she has led initiatives in the UK, China, India, Russia, South Africa, Malaysia, Japan, and the entirety of Western Europe. All that aside, though, she’s simply jolly good fun.

Project management is part of Ashley’s DNA – and in previous roles as Marketing Accounts Specialist, Operations Coordinator, and Development Coordinator she managed hundreds of complex projects from inception to delivery. She also wields fluency in a variety of business-enabling technologies and applications, including JIRA, SmartSheet, Emma, Blackbaud Sphere, Raiser’s Edge, Neulion, InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Of note, Ashley holds a Master’s in Education, a B.A. in Journalism, and a B.S. in Education. But it’s her leadership at Mizzouri that leaves us in awe. She manages brand equity studies, copy tests, MaxDiff studies, and all manner of qualitative projects around the globe with her eyes closed. But she’s earned legendary status when it comes to Hierarchical Bayesian discrete choice conjoint – claims conjoint, product conjoint, portfolio optimization conjoint, virtual reality shelf-based conjoint, and other applications. In fact, she’s worked closely with our statisticians to help develop new and innovative ways to apply this complex and powerful methodology. Phew!

So, what does this Atlanta native do when she’s not poring over price elasticity curves? She spends time with her husband and daughter on their boat at the lake, revels in all things Disney, and rabidly loyally follows University of Georgia football. Go Dawgs!

Brittney’s personal mantra? Make it happen. And that’s something she’s done as a Project Manager, Account Manager, Program Manager, and Community Manager. This networking ninja has forged strategic partnerships with household names like LinkedIn and SurveyMonkey while in corporate relations roles at the American Cancer Society. She has whipped up live and virtual events and conferences for more than 2,000 participants. And she has managed complex (and often sensitive) relationships with speakers, corporate sponsors, community partners, vendors, contractors, and volunteers. Brittney holds a B.A. in Psychology and a Master’s in Organizational Leadership, and she’s an active member of the Project Management Institute. She’ll tell you that her favourite problems to solve for clients are the ones they never realized they had.

But this homing beacon for the best Indian food in any city also has a few little-known talents that we find particularly endearing. She can, for example, out-eat most men if the aforementioned Indian cuisine is on the menu. She can fold a fitted sheet. She continues to successfully avoid operating a dishwasher – for 29 years in and counting. But maybe it’s her adventurous streak that we love most, because we happen to know that she’ll try (almost) anything twice.

We would argue that there are no harder roles than wedding planner and event planner – and yet, Sarah has done both with great success. She wields the power to communicate effectively, liaise with disparate teams, and execute projects from beginning to end. She has served in senior roles for Infinity Hospitality in Nashville (where, for the record, she planned 50+ annual weddings, corporate mixers, and private events) and Before I Do in San Diego (where she directed wedding-day milestones including vendor load-in, guest arrivals, ceremony timing, reception events, and other administrative logistics). To say that Sarah is on top of the details is a gross understatement.

When she’s not monitoring fieldwork or managing complex global timelines, you’ll find this foodie feeding friends and family. But her great love? Travel. She’d say it would be tough to stop her from getting on a plane to explore and eat her way through a new city, state, or country. And as for countries, she’s up to 53. But the thing we’re dying to see is her dancing prowess. By her own admission, Sarah is always the first one on the dance floor and the last to leave – and while she’d also say she may not bring skills to the dance floor, she brings enthusiasm and dedication. We can fully support that since, for the most part, none of us can dance.

Lou has earned awards from AIGA, the National Advertising Foundation, and others – and both Print and HOW magazines have featured her work. We’re not surprised, since this gifted visualizer of all things brand earned her Creative Director stripe very early in her career. Lou has founded and led creative services departments inside client organizations and has successfully launched her own independent design agencies as well. Ask her what matters, and she’ll tell you it’s helping clients communicate their value proposition in a beautiful and engaging way. But when it comes to market research stimulus, we’ve never seen anyone render packaging, advertising, product innovations, and other imagery quite like she does. Maybe it’s her obsession with the way design and branding work together – an obsession that also makes her the last person you want to join at the grocery store unless you’ve got a few spare hours on your hands to look at packaging. But there’s nobody we’d rather share a bag of boiled peanuts with, a delicacy that this Mississippi native proclaims is the South’s finest contribution to the culinary world.