ACP Council

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 chairs the MRS Representation in Research steering group and has spent over 10 years on the board of the Association for Survey Computing (ASC) which she now co-chairs.

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.

No Biography Available

GfK

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.

After over 20 years as a Government social researcher, 10 of which in the role as Chief Social Researcher for the Department for Education, Vicky Petrie decided to move out of the public sector and return to the world of ‘hands-on research’ and joined Verian as a Senior Director in 2023. She has a vast range of applied knowledge across all forms of research methods from designing and delivering large scale surveys and longitudinal studies, mixed mode evaluations of policies and comms campaigns and in-depth qualitative research. She has experience around creating systems and processes to govern standards and improve knowledge and practice across the sector on research ethics and safeguarding, in particular research with children and vulnerable groups.

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.