The MRS Accredited Company Partner Council has been developed with a mission to deliver cost-effective support enabling organisations to develop their people and processes, and to meet their commitment to research standards.

The Accredited Company Partner Council’s mission is to provide experienced and well-informed guidance to MRS Main Board on the operation and development of the Accredited Company Partner Council and to act as a conduit to Council to raise commercially significant issues for the sector and advise on an appropriate MRS response.

Rebecca Cole is Managing Director of Cobalt Sky, an award-winning market research operations company specialising in online data collection and data processing. She joined Cobalt Sky as a graduate in 2006 and is a highly experienced web scripter and quantum programmer. As well as being on the main board of the MRS, Rebecca has spent almost 10 years on the board of the Association for Survey Computing (ASC) which delivers conferences on the latest technologies being used in market research.

Tony is an experienced General Manager with over 25 years of building businesses and teams within the Market Research landscape. He has worked across many different industry sectors and currently holds a range of responsibilities within the Ipsos organisation

After a 14 year career in the Royal Navy, including 7 years flying in Lynx helicopters, Derek undertook an MBA at Cranfield School of Management. He founded Acuigen in 1993, a company that today provides high quality client feedback services and technology – he is also the Managing Director of Business Vision Holdings group of companies. At Acuigen, he is responsible for ensuring that the company’s clients derive the maximum value from their client feedback programmes. He has worked with many top 100 professional services firms and has completed many commercial and public sector client and customer feedback projects. He is a member of the Market Research Society, Accredited Company Partner Council which advocates very high standards of market research.

Ruth is Founder and CEO of award-winning insight localisation agency, EMPOWER Translate. Currently leading on a national vision as Chair of the UK’s Association of Translation Companies, and with 25 years’ experience optimising global research localisation operations for the world’s biggest insight agencies, Ruth has proven experience in developing and implementing roadmaps to tangible, industry-wide change.

Ruth also serves as a Member on the MRS’ Accredited Company Partners Council, where she advises on the creation and implementation of standards, accreditations and best practice for insight operational partners. Ruth’s well-known drive for inclusion, diversity and equality has led to a role in the MRS’ Inclusivity in Sampling Working, and she is currently an active member of the Cardiff University Mentor Programme.


Steve is the CEO of revolutionary consumer insights platform Zappi, with a passion in understanding consumer motivation. By embracing automated technology and fusing it with new thinking in Behavioural Economics, his goal has been to empower brands and drive for abundant, boundless research. His work on Consumer Purchase Journeys has won multiple awards from ESOMAR and the ARF, among others.

Trained by Unilever’s Global Best Practice team in qual, quant, shopper and ethnography, Hannah has over 15 years experience working with some of the world’s leading global brands: from Unilever, Reckitt and Bayer, through Mars Wrigley, Pepsico and Molsons Coors to The National Lottery, Talk Talk and Kia, she has worked in over 40 countries delivering game-changing insight straight to C-Suite. Founder of the Campaign for Real Innovation and awarded MRS Research Hero in her previous role at Blue Yonder, Hannah has recently started as New Business Director at Kokoro, and is based primarily in Leeds. Her passions in research are all things innovation, shopper and category understanding and technical R&D – and getting things done.

 

Get the latest MRS news

Our newsletters cover the latest MRS events, policy updates and research news.