Our people

Understanding the consumer to develop the business has been the main focus of Joaquim's career. He has worked in various functions along the value chain in the market research industry; end-client, agency, and service provider.

Joaquim currently works as a service provider of online data collection, leading the international business of Netquest in Europe and Asia. This has allowed him to set up a new international business division from scratch and get to know different market research realities across the continents.

Within Spain, Joaquim's roles as an "end client" have been: Marketing and Purchase Director at Auchan Supermarkets, Merchandising Director for Carrefour Supermarkets and Marketing Manager for AECOC, the FMCG Spanish institution for retailers, manufacturers and service providers. On the Market Research Agency side, I have worked for six years as a Retail Director for TNS (Kantar) Worldpanel and Synovate.

Kristin Luck is a serial research entrepreneur and a globetrotting internationally recognised keynote speaker on technology and innovation.

Kristin is a growth strategy expert, specialising in nontraditional marketing and branding strategies, and is a regular contributor to both the commercial (Fast Company, Forbes) and academic press (Research World, Journal of Brand Strategy) where she explores emerging marketing and research methods. She is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 sales and marketing experts to follow on Twitter.

Kristin most recently served as a partner and President/CMO of Decipher until the firm's acquisition in 2014 and currently works as a strategic growth consultant and advisor for early and mid-stage companies preparing for funding or acquisition.

After graduating from Business School, Anne Sophie made for marketing at Unilever and Lactalis working as a Product Manager. There, her heart was captured by market research, which she continued at Nielsen Company as a Senior Account Manager and moved into marketing intelligence as a Food & Drinks Manager.

Keen on research, innovation and brands, Anne-Sophie founded Blue Lemon in 2007, operating worldwide within a cross-cultural approach, working with passion helping brands create value and strong connections with their consumers/customers.

She became an active ESOMAR member in 2008 and was honoured to be part of Global Qualitative Programme Committee in Paris and in Porto. She has been serving ESOMAR Council for 4 years. With the newly elected Council Team, Anne-Sophie will bring all her energy and her passion to make our Community and our Industry, more relevant, stronger and better.

Pradeep is the Global Vice President – Consumer & Market Insight (CMI) for Market Clusters, since 1 January 2014. In this role, he is responsible for managing a team of Brand Building CMI managerial resources spread across 7 Regional Market clusters, in over 50 countries.

Pradeep graduated in Mechanical engineering in Bangalore, India. He then graduated from the Indian Institute of Management (IIMB) with four gold medals in Marketing & Finance and also a strong passion for market research. This is when he switched tracks and moved to the Market research area, which has been his passion ever since.

Pradeep joined Unilever in June 1993 and his career there has included the positions of Head of Market Research for Hindustan Lever Ltd, Vice President – CMI for Asia, Global VP CMI for Home & Personal care categories, based in London and leading the CMI function for D&E markets – Asia, Africa, Middle East, Russia & LATAM from 2009-2013.

He is a member of ESOMAR and MRS UK, also representing Unilever in their partnership with the Asian Consumer Insight Institute (ACI), Singapore.

A communication expert with over 30 years in B2B marketing, Lucy Davison founded Keen as Mustard Marketing in 2006 to provide marketing support to clients in data, research and insight. Lucy started out in insights in 2000 as global marketing director of Research International, working in over 55 countries.

Lucy started her career in architecture and interior design. She has also worked as a consultant with several marketing service agencies and property clients. An experienced copywriter, Lucy has contributed to The Financial Times and The Independent as well as Marketing, Marketing Week, Retail Week and Design Week. She has judged Marketing Magazine's Market Research Awards, and is a member of The Marketing Society, the Institute of Directors and the MRS.

She has a degree in English from University College London, a degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Greenwich and received a scholarship to study at Dartmouth College in the US.

Nijat is a young and ambitious Senior Analyst specializing in quantitative research in FMCG and telecom. He has over 3 years of experience in helping multinational clients answering complex business questions as well as executing non-standard pricing and communications studies. Nijat holds an MSc degree in Marketing Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. By having international mind-set (born in Azerbaijan, lived in the Netherlands, South Korea, and the UK) and being multilingual gives him a flexibility in working with different cultures and understand client needs from different perspectives.

In 2017, together with Patricia and Sam, Nijat led a team that won the ESOMAR Corporate Young Professional Award for his work on "Turning a Corner on Negative Perceptions of Refugees in Europe". Besides being an ESOMAR Council member, Nijat is also in the Programme Committee for the ESOMAR Congress 2019 in Edinburgh.

Nikki Lavoie, Director of the up-and-coming MindSpark Research International, is a spirited and intuitive qualitative specialist who translates her passion for understanding people into strategic insight. Although she is experienced in both traditional and contemporary approaches, she has focused largely on combining ethnographic and digital techniques in a cross-cultural context, as a result of her years spent in the US and as an expat living in Paris. She has written and presented on the power of language and culture within a research context, the use of Emotional Intelligence as an insight asset, and has challenged conventional incentive approaches as means of motivating participants.

Ray can be found at the intersection of work, fun & discovery, having spent over 40 years in the market research and insights industry. Ray is the founder of NewMR.org, author of The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research and The Handbook of Mobile Market Research, a content author for the University of Georgia's MRII Principles of Market Research course and a frequent blogger.

Ray has held director level positions with companies such as Millward Brown, Vision Critical, IntelliQuest, Virtual Surveys and The Research Business. Ray is in frequent demand as a speaker, event organiser, workshop leader, trainer and consultant. For the last few years Ray has been the independent consultant running the ESOMAR Global Prices Study and for the last three years has run a workshop on cross cultural presenting in Asia Pacific at the ESOMAR APAC conferences.

Umesh is Head of International Research practice at Hansa Research Group (a leading Indian research agency), since February 2009. He has worked with TNS and The Nielsen Company prior to Hansa Research. Umesh has deep experience in setting up teams and processes for multi-country research. He is a frequent traveler in the US, Europe and APAC regions, this has allowed him to learn different markets, research business situation and challenges.

He has extensive experience in international market research processes & practices, combined with immense expertise in quantitative & qualitative research, offline & online data collection methods, panel management, setting-up custom processes and teams. Umesh is remarkable in his management skills and comfort in dealing with leading research buyers/clients.

Umesh is a passionate insights practitioner, a specialist in Media & Entertainment, Advertising, Telecom, IT and Automotive Research. He holds a degree of Master's in Business Administration with specialization in Marketing.

Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert is Professor of Marketing at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School and Managing Partner and Director of ForwaR&D Lab at InSites Consulting, a full service online market research company. He has been an ESOMAR member since 2006 and recently served as the ESOMAR Belgian Representative for two years.

Niels holds a Masters in Marketing and Ph.D. in Applied Economics and serves as an ISBM Research fellow at Penn State University. He was awarded for his research several times and has been published at Esomar as well as in leading scientic journals such as The Journal of Marketing, The International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Services Research, Industrial Marketing Management, The Journal of Business Research, The Journal of the Market Research Society and Information & Management.