Client Conference 2025

Ciaran Acford, Senior Insights Manager, Ooni

Elle Atton, Marketing Insights Director UK & EU, PepsiCo
Elle holds a ‘dual-hat’ as Marketing Insights Director at PepsiCo — leading Brand, Creative and Innovation insights for UK Foods, whilst deploying Human & Creative Insights capabilities across European markets and categories.
With over 20 years of experience, gained Agency and Clientside, at Global, Regional and Local levels, she’s passionate about building energised teams, iconic brands, and making insights both accessible and impactful for fast-paced stakeholder environments.
A psychologist at heart, she’s happiest decoding people’s needs and translating them into actionable strategies to earn their decisions, unlocking growth where it counts most: through people.

Bethan Blakeley, CX & Research Manager, Simplisafe

Iulia Calin, Global Brand Comms and Product Satisfaction Insight Manager, Jaguar Land Rover

Shifra Cook, Founder & CEO, Ayda

Max Durston, Research Manager, Sky
Max Durston is a qualitative researcher with over a decade of experience across agency and client-side roles. Early in his career, he worked internationally with leading tech and media brands including Meta, Google, Hulu and Warner Bros., helping them uncover deep consumer insight to shape brand, product and communications strategy. Max brings a particular passion for cultural insight and trends, using this lens to spark fresh thinking and unlock new opportunities.
At Sky, Max leads the Customer Closeness programme, evolving it from a content series into a strategic platform that blends immersive live events, AI-powered Digital Twins, and connected insight storytelling. His focus is on embedding the customer voice into decision-making across the business, driving sharper thinking and better outcomes. Max is a strong advocate for democratising insight and championing the customer perspective in ways that are accessible, actionable and enduring.

Jack Egan, Senior Manager, Global Brand Effectiveness, LEGO Group

Damien Field, Managing Director, MM Eye

Caroline Florence, Director, Insight Narrator
Caroline Florence is a thought leader in insight storytelling and activation. She has worked with clients in a variety of sectors to develop real-life user cases that demonstrate the significant impact insight can have on business decisions.
After 15+ years working in client-side and agency insight roles, Caroline founded Insight Narrator in 2012.  Since then, she has trained and coached thousands of individuals and teams looking to drive data-enabled decision making.
Caroline has been included in the Twenty Women in Data and Tech in 2023 and the ESOMAR Insight250 in 2021. She is also the author of Data Storytelling in Marketing, published by Kogan Page in 2024, and is a regular keynote speaker at industry events.

Jane Frost CBE, CEO, MRS

Dr Shane Hanson, Head of Insight & Innovation, Panasonic Europe

Debrah Harding, Managing Director, MRS
Debrah Harding is the Managing Director of MRS, where she leads the standards and public affairs activities working with government departments and global institutions on issues impacting research, data, and insight.
Debrah spearheads MRS' data quality project, as part of the Global Data Quality (GDQ) initiative, which is addressing the impact of technology on data quality in research.  With extensive knowledge of ethical codes, quality standards, guidelines, data protection, and the enforcement of standards, Debrah is a recognised expert in her field.
Additionally, Debrah serves as the Chair of the Global Business Research Network (GRBN), Vice-President of the European Research Federation (EFAMRO) and Chair of the ISO Technical Committee responsible for ISO 20252, the ISO standard for research.

Katherine Hardwick, Group Insight Director, Samworth Brothers

Ruth Hinton, Group Head of Customer Experience & Insight, Vue International & Chair, AURA

Florian Kögl, Founder & CEO, ReDem

Abby Ledger Lomas, Head of Customer Strategy, RSPCA
Abby Ledger-Lomas is an audience strategist who specialises in translating complex customer insights into unified organisational action in the not for profit space. Now leading Customer Strategy at the RSPCA , she leads research, innovation, and planning to build their millions-strong movement for animal kindness. Previously, she spent a decade at the BBC, moving from Marketing to Audience Planning and Creative Strategy, embedding customer empathy and connection at the heart of content creation. Her experience has lead her to successful whole-society gear shifts toward audience-central thinking - embedding single, cohesive audience segmentations and frameworks that cut through silos to drive clear, collective growth.

Suzanne Lugthart, Founder, Fathom Research
Suzanne is a serial clientside researcher, having led teams and projects at eBay, ITV, Sony Mobile, etsy and Rightmove amongst others.  She started her research career in media research after becoming the first non-graduate ever to achieve a Distinction in a Marketing MBA at Cass Business School.
Her passion for ensuring commercial impact is at the forefront of everything she does has led to two MRS New Consumer Insight award wins as well as AURA’s prestigious Insight Impact award (formerly the Rockefeller).
Suzanne supported AURA for 5 years, helping turn The AURAs into one of the industry events of the year.  During her tenure she championed and authored the Working Well Together Charter and continues to be part of the WWT team.  As Fathom Research Suzanne provides an extra pair of hands to clientside research teams in need of interim support.  She is also a volunteer Board Adviser at Be The Business, supporting SMEs, and is a research adviser to the Intergenerational Foundation, a charity supporting intergenerational equality.  Biscuits is her latest passion project to which she has committed her legendary “can do” attitude.

Suzanne Martin, Insight Manager, BT Group

Stephanie Mewse, Global Insights Programme Lead, William Grant & Sons
Steph is an experienced insights expert, with research knowledge gained from a broad range of both agency and client-side roles. In her current role in the Global Insights & Innovation team at William Grant & Sons, a key priority is identifying and partnering with best-in-class agencies to develop consistency in research approach across the organisation, with an aim of bringing improved consumer understanding into brand strategy.

Matthew Miller, Strategic Insight Lead, Mondelez International

Nick Rich, Partner, Growth Constructors
Nick is a Fellow of the Market Research Society and over a 25-year career has seen him lead Insights & Analytics functions at some of the world’s most valued global brands across Technology, Service and FMCG sectors. Now embarking on a new path as co-founder of Growth Constructors (www.growthconstructors.com), Nick continues to challenge the status-quo to ensure our profession and industry remains at the height of commercial, cultural and societal value.
Nick continues to be actively involved in driving Insights industry policy and thought leadership, and equally engaged as a servant to peers, colleagues, our future talent and the Market Research Society.

Danny Russell, Founder, DRC
27 years on the clientside at Boots, Kraft, BA, Sky and O2 has meant Danny has never been allowed to be a shrinking violet……and his involvement in B>B is driven by his desire to ensure the insight sector steps out of the shadows. The only person to have served as both Chair of the MRS and AURA, he wants to take the learnings of Brand Salience and apply it to our sector. B>B is about making us loud and proud as to the benefit we provide.
His favourite biscuit is the Jaffa Cake (let’s not get into the 1991 legal case here please) as it pretends to be healthier than a chocolate digestive whilst simultaneously retaining excellent taste – this is the pure genius of its proposition.

James Sallows, Head of Marketing Effectiveness, LEGO Group

Louise Sharpe, Senior Insight Manager, BT Group & Director, AURA
Louise Sharpe is currently Senior Insight Manager at BT Group, where she leads a team designing and delivering impactful research for a wide range of stakeholders across the business. She has previously held insight roles at leading UK brands including Sky, Tesco, and ITV. Louise is also a Director of AURA, a not-for-profit community for client-side insight leaders. An award-winning insight professional, conference speaker, and industry awards judge, she is passionate about innovation in the industry,  exploring how new tools and techniques can help shape the impact of insight within organisations.  Louise specialises in turning complex data into clear, actionable strategies that drive smarter business decisions.

Anthony Tasgal, Trainer, Author, Strategist

James Wycherley, Chief Executive, Insight Management Academy

Patrick Young, Managing Director, PRS IN VIVO
Patrick Young is the UK Managing Director and a Global Board Member at PRS IN VIVO, a behavioural science agency and one of the UK’s Top 100 Great Places to Work. With over 15 years of international experience, he has led insight-driven growth across four continents and helped reposition businesses for commercial and cultural success. He is the author of Nobody Wants a Hammer and The Forgotten Medium, and writes the Substack What I Read On The Train. Known for combining behavioural science with strategy, Patrick speaks regularly on leadership, innovation, and the future of insight.