CX | UX | MR Conference 2024

Greg Alexander, Senior UX Researcher, MusicMagpie
Greg is currently a Senior UX Researcher at musicMagpie. He started out at Join the Dots (later InSites Consulting and Human8), a market research agency, before moving into the public sector as a User Researcher at the Department for Education. He currently uses what he has learnt so far to build out musicMagpie's research function as the business expands. 
Career highlights include ensuring patients voices' were represented on Covid treatment trials, working on systems to maximise funding to schools, and applying lessons from consumer psychology and behavioural science to improve musicMagpie's current 'fast checkout' journey.

Jane Bloomfield, Global CMO, Landor
Originally starting as a market researcher, Jane has headed up client relationships, new business teams, driven marketing and championed innovation at leading data and insight businesses, including Kantar and Hall & Partners. This suits Jane’s curious and talkative personality perfectly, and has given her a unique understanding of data, consumers, brands and communications and how they work together. She has been incredibly fortunate to work with a huge number of brands across almost every possible business sector, including NatWest, Virgin Atlantic, Marks & Spencer, The British Heart Foundation, Amazon, Sky, Bacardi and Diageo. 

Sam Burton, Research Manager, NS&I
Sam Burton is a Research Manager at NS&I and has been leading on the customer experience workstream for the last two years. Over this period, NS&I has been going through a transformation programme designed to significantly improve customers’ experience of NS&I, providing more flexibility and choice while also improving efficiency. As part of this transformation, NS&I have been using knowledge and insight to develop their digital accessibility maturity. Sam was previously a Research Director at BVA BDRC, having worked in insight since 2008.

Elspeth Bradley, Insight Director, Blue Yonder Research
Elspeth Bradley, Qualitative Insight Director at Blue Yonder Research, brings a wealth of experience to her role as a seasoned consumer insight professional. With a background in client-side roles in retail and FMCG, Elspeth offers a unique perspective that aligns seamlessly with client needs, ensuring a research project's output maintains a robust commercial focus.
Elspeth's commitment to delivering R&D superiority is evident in her role as a qualitative specialist at Blue Yonder, where she works closely with clients, guiding them to discover the 'edge' in their projects. Her expertise and dedication make her a valuable contributor to the evolving landscape of consumer-centric research.

Harriet Brown, Head of Customer Strategy, AXA UK&I
Harriet has worked in the Insurance Industry for over 12 years in Marketing, Proposition and CEO office roles. She now leads the AXA UK&I Customer Strategy to help create a truly customer centric organisation, in order to deliver both cohesive and distinctive experiences that are quintessentially AXA.
Harriet is driven to bring together talented and passionate people from across AXA, to implement a successful transversal strategy which will drive meaningful change for AXA customers today, and tomorrow.

Maria Dickson, Customer Strategy Lead, AXA UK&I
Maria has worked in the Financial Services sector for over 16 years in research and consultancy roles, moving to client side to AXA just over a year ago. Maria has a unique and honest perspective when connecting high-level strategy to actionable plans, to create cohesion in her approach to Journey Management.
Maria’s passion to always remain ‘shamelessly customer’ focused keeps her naturally curious, and courageous enough to challenge the status quo in favour of better customer outcomes. Maria continues to develop her influence, sharing an outside-in approach to how we look at customers and their journeys, helping the organisation succeed.

Jason Foster, CEO Cynozure
Jason?Foster?is the Founder and CEO of Cynozure, a leading data and analytics consultancy, which was named one of the Sunday Times’ top 50 fastest- growing private companies in 2022 & 2023. He is the co-author of ‘Data Means Business’, the go-to book for business leaders looking to develop the strategies required to generate value from data and scale quickly.?Jason?also hosts the Hub & Spoken podcast where he covers a wide range of topics on leadership, culture, technology, change and strategy associated with data and analytics. He is also on the board of the Data Literacy Academy. Jason was featured in the DataIQ 100 Most Influential People in Data in 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023.  

Matt Gibson, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Cyber-Duck
Matt Gibson is Chief Commercial Officer and Associate Director at Cyber-Duck, a CACI Business - a user-centred digital transformation agency based out of the UK. With nearly 20 year’s background in Interaction Design, Matt helps oversee all aspects of Cyber-Duck’s production lifecycle including research, design, and delivery of inclusive products and services, for organisations like Sport England, Compare the Market and the Bank of England. As a BIMA Hot 100 top creative in the UK, Matt is a champion for sustainable design, and accessibility best practices – based on his firm belief in the universality of the web and the power sustainable research and design has in creating better customer experiences for everyone – levelling up Cyber-Duck’s team and clients’ awareness and knowledge to deliver this. Also speaking at SXSW, UXPA, UX London, and Business X Design on the topic.

Isobel Grad, Project Director, Sign Salad
Isobel is a Project Director at Sign Salad, a cultural consultancy specialising in semiotics and cultural insight to help make brands more meaningful and engaging. Using a combination of semiotic & language analysis, social listening tools, desk-based research and on the ground fieldwork, she delivers strategic guidance on a wide range of brand challenges and creative workstreams. She has worked on projects ranging from coffee culture and café design in the UK and US, visual identity and UX design for a large ecommerce platform, investigating consumer culture in South Korea, and developing a new retail and product strategy for a global drinks brand. She has previous experience as a creative strategist in a brand experience design studio, and is particularly excited about how brands can develop unique, outstanding customer experiences and drive engagement and brand loyalty by incorporating deep cultural thinking into UX and physical interior design.

Rosa Halford, Global Insights Manager, Asahi Europe & International
Rosa is Group Insight Manager (Brand & Consumer) at Asahi Europe & International, leading research across audience understanding, early stage innovation and creative development on our portfolio of global brands, including Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Asahi Super Dry and Pilsner Urquell. Previously in insight teams at Penguin Random House, Clear M&C Saatchi and OMD UK. 
Across those roles, she's developed a knack for piloting & embedding new methodologies, being scrappy with budgets and driving bigger impact through stakeholder collaboration. 

Chris Hall, VP, Client Development, Savanta

Melissa Hamdoun, Senior Market Researcher, Blinkist
Melissa leads all quantitive research initiatives at Blinkist. 
Her background is in high volume global projects and she started her career within a Market research agency before transitioning client-side about 5 years ago. She now helps shape internal Research & Insights functions; blending the theory and best practise of MR with the needs of internal product, design, growth and marketing teams. 
The R&I team at Blinkist is a mix of UX, MR & ResearchOps.

Lucy Hobbs, Research Director, Boxclever
Lucy Hobbs is a Senior Research Director at Boxclever; with 25 years of experience in qualitative research. Her expertise has helped many brands gain a deeper understanding of their audiences. Lucy relishes unearthing unmet needs by exploring values, behaviours and beliefs and then sharing these with her clients in order to build their understanding, so that they can then go on to better meet customer needs.

Louise Hughes, Chief Customer Officer, Bulbshare
Louise is currently Chief Customer Officer at Bulbshare. Her role is to ensure customer experience is constantly evolving and improving, providing best-in-class research and happy clients.
Her passion for and understanding of client experience comes from being on the client side - having previously led insight and commercial teams across several global FMCG organisations and retailers. In fact, Louise was once a client of Bulbshare and used the platform as a customer before joining the business, bringing all that experience into her role to deliver outstanding value and outcomes for customers.

Kerry Jones, Insights Controller at Greencore
Kerry has worked in FMCG for over two decades in various Category and Insight roles, and is currently responsible for managing the Insight agenda across Greencore’s business portfolio. Employing over 12,000 colleagues in the UK, Greencore is a leading manufacturer of own-label convenience foods.
In her role as Insight Controller, Kerry manages the delivery of consumer research projects across multiple product categories, customers and channels, distilling actionable insight to support strategic decision making and profitable category growth. She continuously strives to better understand people and their truths, and to ensure the consumer remains at the heart of business decisions. Kerry builds and values effective long-term agency relationships and is a strong believer in the power of research partnerships to drive consumer centricity and fresh thinking.
Inquisitive and passionate about people and food. Kerry also loves a cultural travel adventure.

Benedict Kenney, Research Manager – Customer Insight, M&S
With 12 years’ experience in the research industry, spanning agency and client side, Benedict has worked within a number of sectors including Tech, Sport and most recently C&H Retail, for M&S. He leads a variety of continuous and ad hoc projects stretching across the M&S Clothing & Home business units, ensuring insight is actionable, and that the customer is firmly at the heart of decision making.

Hamish Kynoch, Director, Discovery Research
Hamish Kynoch is the Head of Qualitative Research at Discovery Research and has been working closely with NS&I over the past 3 or 4 years to help them deliver a digital transformation of their business, putting accessibility and vulnerable customers at the very heart of what they do. Understanding how best to reach and research the vulnerable people in our society, and how to describe to clients what this means for their UX and CX journeys is something that has become a focus for Discovery Research and Hamish in particular over the recent past.

Nikki Lavoie, EVP Innovation & Strategy, Savanta
Nikki is the EVP, Global Experience Strategy for Savanta, and was previously the Founder and CEO of Mindspark Research International, ESOMAR Council Member and Member of the AQR Board.
An American in Paris, she  is passionate about people, insatiably curious, has a love for learning and a talent for turning it all into insight.
Now working as a consultant, crossing cultural boundaries and talking to strangers for a living, she works with brands and agencies that seek a deeper connection with and understanding of the communities that support them.
Nikki is a qualitative researcher who specialises in digital and ethnographic techniques, and is always up for the challenge of immersing herself into the lives of others in order to provide clarity and strategic direction.

Stephanie Marsh, UX Research Operations Lead, Springer Nature
Stephanie Marsh (she/they) is a leading UX research professional and currently UX Research Operations Lead at Springer Nature. They are the former Head of User Research and Analysis for the UK Government Digital Service and former Head of Digital Strategy for the UK Ministry of Defence. She was also previously a consultant at Bunnyfoot, a leading UX consultancy in the UK. They have contributed chapters to a range of peer-reviewed texts in related fields and has delivered talks on UX Research, Research Operations and UX strategies at a range of conferences and industry events. The second edition of Stephanie’s book User Research was published in 2022. She is based in London.

Ryan Moriarty, Director of Data & Insight, Soho House & Co
Ryan is the Director of Data & Insights at Soho House, a global membership club and hospitality business.  Ryan has worked in Analytics and Insights roles across a range of businesses and industries, from Tesco, Just Eat, Marks & Spencer, Sofar Sounds and Gopuff. He specialises in helping brands build their data and insights capabilities to drive decision-making.

Oliver Taylor, Head of Insight (Consumer & Market), Greene King
Oliver Taylor joined Greene King in 2019 and has been the brewer pubco’s Head of Consumer & Market Insight since 2021, following a decade agency-side in research consultancy for the hospitality sector. Primary achievements in his time at Greene King include the development and embedding of an attitudinal consumer segmentation, development of a bespoke occasions model for pub visitation, and building both qualitative and quantitative consumer communities that the business has relied upon for insight throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, subsequent recovery period and indeed the cost of living crisis. Oliver was named in Restaurant Marketer & Innovator’s ’30 under 30’ in 2018, and is currently working toward an Executive MBA at Birmingham City University.

Paul Thomas, International Insight Director and Global Head of Shopper Insight, Beam Suntory
Paul is currently Head of Insights for EMEA and Shopper at Beam Suntory, prior to that he was Global Head of Insights for Asahi, and also headed up Insights for Africa at Diageo and looked after Insights in the UK for Ferrero.   Paul has also held pure innovation roles, and has worked across a number of agencies. 
Paul’s superpowers in research are around team leadership, cultural understanding and simplification – landing big insights in the simplest way possible to drive business change.

Katie Utley, Lead UX Researcher, Sky Betting & Gaming
Katie is the Lead UX Researcher for Sky Betting and Gaming. After discovering a passion for analysing consumer behaviour during her Psychology degree, Katie started her research career over 7 years ago in the Market Research industry. She began in the agency world which provided an opportunity to work in range of different sectors with various clients across the globe. In 2022, Katie decided to take a leap from the Market Research world and jump into UXR. During this time, she has utilised her Market Research knowledge to help build an established UXR team within the business. Katie is the UXR voice for the business, making sure a customer centric vision is leading all product and design decisions within Sky Bet and the five Sky Gaming brands (Vegas, Casino, Poker, Bingo and Sky Bet Games).