B2B Research Conference 2024

Dr Christine Bailey, Senior Director of Marketing, Moody’s KYC
Dr. Christine Bailey is Senior Director, Marketing, for Moody’s compliance and third-party risk management business in Europe and Africa.  She was previously CMO of Passfort, a SaaS RegTech provider acquired by Moody’s in Nov 2021. Prior to that she was Managing Director, SMB UK, and CMO at Valitor, a European payment solutions company. 

Christine has spent her career in B2B Tech/FinTech marketing roles, leading European marketing functions for Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems as well as for pre-IPO companies. 

A respected thought-leader and public speaker with two TEDx Talks, Christine is a published author of “Customer Insight Strategies: How to understand your audience and create remarkable marketing” and contributing author of The PAYTECH book.  She has a doctorate (DBA) in customer insight.

Jessica Ashcroft, Brother International Europe
Jessica’s experience in customer data and insight spans 12 years. She has provided customer insight to the on-trade and food retail sectors before becoming the Customer Insight Officer at Brother International Europe, a leading supplier of technology solutions, in 2019. Prior to this role, most of her work encompassed B2C projects but today she works across both B2B and B2C research in tandem. Jessica delivers customer data, insight and representation across a wide variety of projects, striving for the customer to remain at the heart of every decision.

Stephen Bairfelt, Managing Director of Prevision Research and Chair, MRS B2B Network 
Stephen is Managing Director of specialist data collection company, Prevision Research and joint Managing Director of research and insight consultancy, Purple Market Research Ltd. He has always had a passion for B2B research and believes strongly that there are certain skills required for this type of research, which set it apart from other types of research. He is also very keen to ensure that these skills are passed down to younger generations and those with less experience in reaching B2B and trade audiences.

Stephen began his research career at Research International, where he initially became involved in B2B research. He then joined Shell UK as Head of Insight, before setting up Purple Market Research with B2B specialist, Trevor Wilkinson. In 2019, he was involved in the purchase of B2B data collection company, Prevision Research and now leads this business.
He is a former Chair of the Independent Consultants Group (ICG) and was an MRS main board member for 7 years. He also spent a number of years as a judge on the MRS awards panel. In 2021 he became a Fellow of the MRS in recognition of his contribution to and involvement in the research industry.

Karin Lombard, Lead - Global Customer and Behavioural Insights Function, Simply Business
Karin is a Strategy, Insight, and Innovation Leader with 24 years’ experience in decoding real human needs and crafting powerful customer, category, and market insights. She thrives on translating these insights into commercial opportunities that drive Brand/Positioning, Growth Acceleration, Product Innovation and Customer Experience strategies and operational plans. 
She has a Masters Degree in Politics and Research. With only a few years' experience working agency-side, she has spent most of her career client-side with senior roles across multiple sectors (including Retail, FMCG, Financial Services, Manufacturing and Telecoms) in the UK, US, Europe and Africa, including roles at O2, Pepkor, Disney Channel and Sky. She currently heads up the Global Customer and Behavioural Insights function at Simply Business, a market-leading Digital Insurance Provider that protects the livelihood of more than 1 million small and micro-businesses in the UK and US. 

Dan Coombes, Head of Activation, Basis
Dan is Head of Activation at Basis, with responsibility for helping client teams to land and embed strategic insights in a way that successfully drives action. In a decade as a senior leader at Basis he has worked across B2B and B2C for a diverse range of brands: from Sage to BT Group, and Gen Digital to Google.
His prior positions have included roles at C Space and a stint in public sector strategic marketing consultancy at the Central Office of Information.

Hanna Wilcox, VP Customer Insight, Sage
Hanna is the VP Global Customer Experience & Insight at Sage. She has over 25 years experience in insight applied to brand, proposition, advertising and customer experience strategy development. 

She discovered her huge passion for understanding humans and their underlying needs and motivations from her early career at Unilever and has subsequently worked at John Lewis and across multiple brands at a CX design start up.

Hanna is now on a mission to close the customer centricity gap in B2B vs B2C, by creating empathy and connection with the humans behind the businesses and driving alignment throughout the stakeholder ecosystem. 

Santosh Makhani, Senior Research Director
With over two decades of agency-side experience, Santosh is a seasoned insight professional known for his steely logic, big-picture thinking, and a track record of delivering high-quality, actionable research in both B2B and B2C domains. His expertise has guided organisations within financial services, technology, quasi-governmental bodies, travel, and tourism sectors. Santosh has a particular interest in the financial services sector due to its critical impact on both consumers and businesses.

B2B research holds a special place in Santosh’s heart, forming a substantial part of his early career. He has led accounts for business and corporate financial services clients, leveraging insights from large, complex customer experience tracking projects to drive business growth. He has also delivered strategic ad hoc studies involving diverse audiences, from farming/agriculture businesses to motor trade dealers, small to large business users of asset & invoice financing products, and businesses severely affected by the 2008 financial and 2019 COVID crises.

With his dedication to B2B research, his commitment to excellence, and his experience in harnessing insights to advance client objectives, Santosh is keen to play his part in steering B2B research towards new horizons.

Amy Middleton, Director, Beam Fieldwork 
Amy is Company Director of BEAM Fieldwork, a highly celebrated fieldwork agency delivering qualitative and quantitative research project management in the UK and across the globe.

With 25 years’ experience in the market research industry, including her active involvement and prominent roles in the BIG Committee, and the ICG, establishing and growing BEAM Fieldwork over the past 7 years also led Amy to launch research recruitment brand, Give Opinions in 2020.

As a lifelong lover of shopping, Amy is passionate about consumer research. She leads her team of resourceful and supportive ‘BEAMIES’ to bring together the people, the places, the team, and the tools to deliver trusted and effective projects to brands and agencies around the world.

Jordan Wood, Associate Director, Opinium
Jordan is an Associate Director and Partner at Opinium, an award-winning insight agency with offices across London, New York, Amsterdam and Cape Town. He has been in the industry for 13 years, starting off his career at Dynata and spending the last 10 years at Opinium.

Jordan specialises in research for brand & communications, working in both B2C and B2B to help his clients understand their audiences and make evidence-based decisions. Media and campaign measurement is where his passion lies, most notably developing research methodologies to allow clients to measure the impact of innovations in OOH and influencer marketing.
Outside of work, Jordan is kept busy by his two young daughters and likes to spend some quality time on the golf course, when they allow him to!

Carrie Condino, B2B Research Director, MTM
Carrie is a Research Director within the research and strategy team at MTM, specialising in the tech and media sectors. She combined her love of data with understanding human behaviour and psychology by completing a Master in Market Research & Consumer Behaviour. Carrie now works closely with her clients such as Figma, Google, Pinterest and Bloomberg, leveraging quant and qual methods to empower stakeholder decisions across brand strategy, go-to-market planning, customer experience, and product development. She has a diverse track record with B2B audiences across international markets, from C-Suite executives to SMEs and practitioners such as developers and cybersecurity admins. Her ability to tailor her research approach to meet the specific needs of each audience has made her a valuable asset to clients seeking to make data-driven decisions.

Marcus Brandford, New Product Researcher, Figma
Marcus uses research to inform product and marketing strategies for disruptive technology products. As part of Figma's New Products Research group, he partners with stakeholder teams to identify unmet user needs and opportunities for growth. He began his career on the agency side at Known, where he led research to help companies like Google and Microsoft explore emerging technologies and enter new markets. He stepped away from the field to pursue his MBA from UC Berkeley and uncover opportunities for research to drive greater business impact before joining Figma in 2022.

Mireille Patoine, Strategic Customer Insights Leader, Maersk
Mireille Patoine, Strategic Customer Insights Leader at Maersk, transforms data into gold with her 15+ years of user research, customer insights, and innovation prowess. Driven by a passion for understanding customers, products, and markets, she skillfully combines primary research techniques and customer-centric frameworks like Customer Journeys & Personas to enable colleagues in developing outstanding products, services and experiences. As a leader of customer empathy, Mireille fosters collaboration among cross-functional teams, ensuring that insights turn into exceptional customer-centric business decisions.