Client Conference 2025

Ciaran Acford, Senior Insights Manager, Ooni
Ciaran has followed the tried and tested route from agency to client side role - covering many categories and markets along the way. He started off at Ipsos focussing on all things innovation testing and forecasting, first in London followed by a year in Mexico City. After that he moved to his first client side role, working in Travel and Tourism while living in Vancouver, followed by Whisky once back in the UK. Currently he heads up Ooni’s Global insights program, spanning brand tracking, product development, audience understanding, creative testing, customer experience and everything in between. 
He believes good research is just the start, it's nothing though if it doesn't come with engaging storytelling and memorable deliverables. His aim is to make sure insights is talked about long after he's left the room. He's an active member of AURA speaking at several events and sharing his take on how he thinks insights teams can partner with the business. 

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
Bethan has worked in research and analytics for over a decade, constantly striving to bridge the gap between the two. She spent most of this time agency-side, but is now over a year into her first client-side role at SimpliSafe UK, an emerging brand in the UK home security space. Here, she is setting up the research function from the ground up.
She is a keen member of the MRS Advanced Insights & Analytics team, and also wrote the MRS Impact analytics column. Now that she’s on the other side, she’s keen to use her agency experience of bringing clients closer to their customers to help her stakeholders fulfill their company value of being "Customer Obsessed".

Iulia Calin, Global Brand Comms and Product Satisfaction Insight Manager, Jaguar Land Rover
A native of Romania who has lived in France and the UK. Her passion for travel encompasses cultural, political, sociological, and gastronomical experiences, which makes her a natural-born researcher. Her career started at Renault, where her role quickly expanded to include Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Moving to the UK to join Jaguar Land Rover in 2016, Iulia has taken on the Global Brand Health research as part of a broader portfolio of brand, comms, product satisfaction and segmentation research. She is a hands-on client-side researcher, travelling to local markets to observe customer research first-hand and spreading business-critical insights.

Shifra Cook, Founder & CEO, Ayda
Shifra is a serial entrepreneur and innovator dedicated to making research smarter, fairer and more efficient. After two decades in media and advertising – building research tools, leading global teams and after a successful business exit - she founded Ayda, a software company reshaping operations and back-office research tasks. Guided by her belief in pragmatic innovation, Shifra develops technology that solves real-world challenges across clinical, consumer, B2B and academic research. Through Ayda’s trusted suite of tools she champions data quality, participant experience and integrity - empowering research teams to focus on what truly matters: generating insights to drive meaningful change.

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
Jack is currently Senior Manager, Global Brand Effectiveness at the LEGO Group. In this role he is leading the rapid expansion and development of new approaches to understanding the impact that marketing can have on one of the world’s most well-loved brands. He is also responsible for other marketing effectiveness workstreams, such as delivering Marketing Mix Modelling to a number of markets globally. Jack works closely with multiple teams and stakeholders across the business to deliver insights in a high-impact and actionable way. Prior to the LEGO Group, after starting his career with Ipsos, he has held various insight and marketing effectiveness roles both client and agency-side, most recently at WPP and Smart Energy GB.

Damien Field, Managing Director, MM Eye
In 1995 Damien started his career as a graduate trainee working on the Jaguar brand in an automotive research agency. In the intervening years, he has worked across a wide range of categories but has always retained a passion for luxury automotive (sadly, not something he can indulge in personally on a researcher’s salary!). In 2010, Damien was part of the team which set up JLR’s Global Brand Health study. In 2025 he continues to work on the programme, supporting clients and colleagues and ensuring it remains relevant in an ever- changing world.

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
Jane joined MRS as CEO after a career in marketing and strategy culminating in Board roles and responsibilities for some of the UKs best loved brands and well known institutions. 
She trained at Unilever and always blesses the experience there working with some formidable market researchers , meaning that when she was brought in to organisations with difficult issues , she reached for their understanding of customer first. 
After leaving Unilever she joined Shell as Marketing Director for the Gulf, pioneering their first tv ad campaigns, she then returned to London to found the company’s brand organisation and first pan European advertising. 
She was head-hunted from Shell to the BBC as their first Brand Director . Here she worked with some outstanding researchers on a new model of value for the BBC and their first needs mapping exercise . After rescuing BBC Children in Need from being thrown on the scrap heap, she  re-designed the BBC logo and was responsible for the BBC’s best ever ad campaign ,which included the Lou Reed song Perfect Day . Perfect Day ultimately raised over £2.5m for BBC Children in Need. 
Jane gained about ¾ of her brand and creative awards for work at the BBC. 
A period in government followed , first as Strategy Director to the Lord Chancellor and then as Customer Director at HMRC. This period was marked by ground breaking insight work on issues as domestic violence , debt and jurors perceptions of the justice system. The work she led on the attitudinal mapping of the public for HMRC led to strategy changes , millions of pounds of savings on major processes and is still a case study for government training to this day.     

Dr Shane Hanson, Head of Insight & Innovation, Panasonic Europe
Shane Hanson, Director of Insights & Innovation at Panasonic Consumer Electronics, passionately advocates for customer insights and the art of storytelling in marketing. Her unwavering commitment to talent development is evident in her role as a leader of global insights initiatives within the company. Renowned for her expertise in insights tools and methodologies, Shane is the trusted source for translating complex data into compelling narratives.
Her impressive track record includes empowering business leaders with analytics expertise, driving the development of innovative roadmaps, and delivering strategic insights to major organisations such as Procter & Gamble, KP Snacks, and Philips. As a skilled facilitator, she conducts dynamic workshops that not only shape strategy but also drive significant business results. Her relentless dedication to change management and her ability to harness human insights to bolster business performance are defining characteristics of her approach.
Currently, Shane is further enhancing her skills by pursuing an MBA at the University of Exeter Business School, which she is expected to complete in early 2026.

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
Katherine Hardwick is a purpose-driven insight leader with a proven ability to transform human understanding into commercial advantage within complex, fast-paced environments.
Her career spans both public and private sectors, covering food and financial services, and includes work with well-known brands such as Compare the Market, Ryvita, Dorset Cereals, Patak’s & Blue Dragon, Soreen, Ginsters, and Higgidy.
In her current role as Group Insight Director at Samworth Brothers, Katherine has built an award-winning team and repositioned insight as a strategic growth engine across multiple brands and categories.
A strategic thinker and skilled facilitator, she is recognised for her ability to bring clarity to complexity, inspire teams, and translate insight into tangible business impact.

Ruth Hinton, Group Head of Customer Experience & Insight, Vue International & Chair, AURA
Ruth Hinton has a 20-year career in client-side consumer insight at major retail and hospitality brands, and a background in psychology.  She is currently Group Head of Customer Experience at Vue International; and Chair of Aura, a supportive community of over 900 clientside insight people, providing real examples, quality advice and fresh perspectives , via events and networking.  Ruth is working with a team of volunteers – Aura members and agency supporters – to share, embed and inspire Working Well Together, an initiative for better client-agency relationships. 

Becki Jarvis, Research Director, Trinity McQueen
Becki is a trusted advisor to some of the biggest names globally in the FMCG and retail with a focus on beauty and wellbeing. Becki’s expertise lies in leveraging behavioural science to get closer to customers to drive growth. Most notably, Becki works closely with Nestle, Boots UK, ASDA, No7 Brands and Estee Lauder. Clear communication, strong relationships and getting under the skin of problems to be solved is why Becki is passionate about getting both clients and agencies working better together.

 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
Suzanne Martin is an experienced insight professional with over 20 years working in client-side research teams. She began her career agency side at GfK and has since built deep expertise across customer experience, brand, propositions and strategic insight.  Currently at BT Group, Suzanne leads strategic programs including segmentation and customer closeness initiatives, bringing senior leaders face-to-face with real customer needs to drive meaningful change and ensuring customer insight is at the heart of strategic planning.  Naturally curious with a people first approach, Suzanne is passionate about turning insight into action and known for creating collaborative, inclusive environments that support growth and development.

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
Matthew is an experienced Insights and Analytics professional with over 15 years’ experience in agency and client-side roles covering global, regional and local areas. Having started his career at Nielsen managing several different clients he has since worked at snacking company Mondelez for the majority of his career. Currently Matthew leads the Innovation, Brand Equity and Strategy insights programs for the European team on two of Mondelez’ biggest brands; Oreo the world’s #1 biscuit brand and Milka Chocobakery. Utilising strategic thinking and problem solving, he develops and delivers a strong understanding of the consumer to enable the teams to shape their brand strategy, creative campaigns and innovations for both the short and long term.

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
James is the Global Head of Marketing Effectiveness at The LEGO Group where he is spearheading a game-changing approach to directly drive business growth through the application of insights. He has extensive experience in the insights space, having worked in fieldwork, full-service insights, media agency insights and for the past 7 years within brands. His career has had a particular focus on people development and advancing the role of insights as a business growth catalyst. In recent years he has launched a transformational MMM programme, an Insights Academy, a new Innovation approach centred on insights, a MiniMBA in insights in partnership with UCL (with over 2,000 non-insights colleagues enrolled) and a hot-housing career development programme for insights high-performers.

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.#

Maddie Shields, Senior Insight Manager, Dr. Martens & Director, Aura
Maddie started out her insight career at Kantar before moving client side 7 years ago. She’s worked for challenger brands in food, furniture and now footwear, where she currently works as the Senior Insights Manager for Dr. Martens. Her role covers a global remit and supports strategic brand and corporate planning. Maddie is also a Director of Aura, a volunteer-led community of over 900 client-side insight people, providing real examples, quality advice and fresh perspectives via events and networking.

Anthony Tasgal, Trainer, Author, Strategist
Tas is a man of many lanyards: ad agency Planner, trainer, author, TEDx speaker, and lecturer.
He is a Course Director for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Market Research Society, the Institute of Internal Communications, the Civil Service College and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.
He is a global speaker, did a TEDx talk in Newcastle, and writes a regular column for “Director”, The Institute of Directors magazine, an Associate Lecturer at Bucks New University and Nottingham Trent University and a Brand Ambassador for Home Grown Club in London.
He specialises in applying Storytelling, Behavioural Economics and “Insightment” to brands, research and communications.
He works for clients as varied as the BBC, Panasonic, Nokia, The Royal Albert Hall,  EE, the UK NHS.
He is the author of 7 books- the award-winning The Storytelling Book, [which has sold 40,000 copies globally] The Inspiratorium , “InCitations” , The Storytelling Workbook , The Insight Book,  The Consumer Behaviour Book and The Classical Marketing Book (September 2025.)
He is taller on Zoom.

James Wycherley, Chief Executive, Insight Management Academy
James joined the Insight Management Academy (IMA) as Chief Executive in May 2015 after 10 years as Director of Customer Insight and Analysis at Barclays.
He is the author of Transforming Insight (2020) and The Insight Leader’s Playbook (2025) and his Transforming Insight podcast has been downloaded over 20,000 times.
James is an expert on Insight team transformation, leadership, strategy, commercialisation, positioning, influence and knowledge development.
He has delivered consultancy and keynote presentations in Europe, North America, Australia, India and the Middle East, and has lectured at the Winchester, Leicester, Anglia and Ashridge Business Schools.
James has spent over 24 hours of his life presenting at Quirk’s events, in London, New York and Chicago, holding the global record, with 59 speaker sessions so far!
James joined the board of the Market Research Education Foundation in 2025, and outside work is an avid theatre, music and rugby fan, following Northampton Saints, and dividing his time between Warwickshire and Cornwall.

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.