Storytelling Conference 2023

Alex Baines, Research Manager, Walnut Unlimited
With a background in psychology, and consumer behaviour, Alex loves the challenge of getting under the skin of more complicated topics, where people rarely tell the full story, out loud at least. Her Behavioural Science expertise allows for a more holistic and authentic view into how people think and behave. Alex trained as a quantitative researcher but now specialises in behavioural science, and with this expertise is able to uncover key findings from data and dig far deeper. She is able to understand and rationalise the patterns and behaviour from a behavioural lens. Alex has spoken about the ethics of Behavioural Science application at a previous MRS&More conference and was also very honoured to be shortlisted for the MRS Young Researcher of the year award last year.

Kate Bayliffe, Group Insight Manager, Samworth Brothers
Kate Bayliffe is a Group Insight Manager at Samworth Brothers; with 15 years’ experience in client side research gained at Boots, Avon and Npower.  With equal passion for understanding consumer behaviour and food trends Kate loves bringing the consumer to life to help embed a customer centric culture focussing on delivering impactful, engaging insights turning “so-what’s” into “now what’s”.

Anne Caffrey, Senior Manager, Nationwide
Anne is a senior research leader at Nationwide Building Society. She has worked across a wide range of sectors, from retail to telecoms and financial services. Anne has over 20 years of professional experience, and a long track record in applying data and qual insight to drive creative and imaginative answers to the biggest questions our business face.

Laura Carter, Human8
Laura is a Senior Research Manager at Human8. She has a wealth of experience running long-term research communities for UK financial services both agency and client side. Laura is passionate about using communities to build up a deeper understanding of customer behaviour and needs over time, to bring the customer voice into the business whilst also ensuring insights are tangible and commercially focused.  
Laura also champions and co-ordinates our Financial Services showcase sessions within the team to aid the development of managers and juniors working with clients in this sector.

Leigh Caldwell, Founder, Irrational Agency
Once upon a time...a young mathematician discovered that the mysterious world of human beings was not as simple and predictable as his textbooks had told him. He embarked on a quest to learn the secrets of psychology and behavioural science, entering the realm of the grand wizards Kahneman and Ariely, finding the powerful weapons of System 1 and System 2, and learning to become adept in wielding heuristics to defeating the demons of cognitive bias. Eventually he gathered a diverse band of adventurers to form the fellowship of Irrational Agency, taking on the mission of teaching the research world how to understand human behaviour, going beyond claimed behaviour to measure what people actually do, think and feel. Finally he made his greatest discovery - System 3 - the unexplored dimension of the brain where narratives and stories live: the creative space where imagination comes from. This mathematician was adopted as a certified member of the MRS and now helps brands find and use the magical power of the stories in their customers' minds...so they can all live happily ever after.

Sunayana Datta, Insights and Intelligence Manager, Pernod Ricard Global Travel Retail

Sunayana Datta is a seasoned professional with a passion for Consumer Insights and a knack for uncovering deep market trends. Originally from India and now based in London, she brings over 8 years of experience in this field.
Her expertise lies in uncovering consumer behaviour and providing valuable insights to drive business strategies. Her most recent role with Pernod Ricard GTR has allowed her to delve into Traveller Insights & Intelligence, contributing to the company's business decisions in the global travel retail sector. Prior to this, she honed her skills at Kantar, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the market research landscape from an agency perspective.
Beyond her professional pursuits, she embraces her adventurous spirit by exploring diverse cuisines, making her a true food enthusiast. She enjoys experimenting with new recipes, satisfying her culinary curiosity. In her leisure time, she also indulges in her love for travel, immersing herself in new cultures, and occasionally venturing on hikes to connect with nature.
Sunayana's passion for her work, coupled with her personal interests, keeps her motivated, constantly seeking new avenues for growth and knowledge in both her professional and personal life.

Laura Carter, Senior Research Manager, Nationwide

Lucy Hobbs, Research Director, Boxclever Consulting
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.

Dr Sarah Jenkins, Director, Magenta
Sarah has 20 years’ experience delivering high quality insight for global clients as well as more innovative and agile start up companies. Sarah is a published author and started her career conducting social policy research before moving to Ipsos MORI where she was Head of Qualitative within their Media, Content and Technology team, and won the prestigious AQR Award for Qualitative Effectiveness for her work with the BBC. Sarah founded Magenta in 2016 and has since delivered a variety of audience understanding studies and specialises in delivering tangible and actionable outputs for clients, evidenced by being a finalist for the Market Research Society Independent Consultants Award in 2018 and 2019 for client impact. 

Martin Lee, Co-founder, Acacia Avenue
Martin is a branding specialist, and one of the co-founders of Acacia Avenue, where he leads client work across diverse sectors including financial services, travel, retail and media amongst others.  As an ex Marketing Director of Waterstones, Martin has hands-on client-side experience of turning insight into strategic brand and marketing activity. This background also gives him a lifelong passion for stories and storytelling, including being the co-author of a novel that was collectively written by 15 people, and also contributing to one book on business writing and another on the UK's most long-lasting businesses. 

Katie Kaylor, Global CMI Foresight, Mars
Starting her career as a Strategic Brand Consultant working with the likes of Unilever and Diageo, Katie then pursued her insight career in the telecoms and mobile industry before moving to FMCG. For the last 8 years, Katie has worked in Global Consumer & Market Insight at Mars Food, currently focusing on portfolio growth across brands such as Ben’s Original and Dolmio.
With a passion for bringing the consumer and unheard voices into the business to drive strategy and execution, storytelling through triangulating multiple sources to create a single and actionable narrative is continually at the heart of Katie’s work. 

Liga Magdelenoka-Keen, Director of International Insights, Scientific Games 
Liga Magdalenoka-Keen has been working in Consumer Insights for over 20 years across Europe at various industry leading companies, including Gaz de France, Unilever, SKY Betting and Gaming and for the past 7 years at Scientific Games (one of the global leaders in the lottery industry) where she is a Director of International Insights. Liga specialises in setting up and leading multijurisdictional research projects in Europe, Asia and Africa, with a view to produce actionable insights for the stakeholders.
Liga’s work centres around weaving different methodologies into distinct research initiatives. The research in turn delivers empowering outputs to lotteries around the world.  With an estimated $115 billion generated for lottery beneficiaries globally in the past year, it’s safe to say that it is a very rewarding work indeed. 

Omar Mahmoud, International consultant - Market Research, Marketing, and Fundraising 
An international consultant with 40 years of global experience in multinational corporations and international organizations. Author of books and articles, teacher and speaker at international conferences. Areas of expertise include behavioral economics, market research, marketing, branding and innovation.

Sal Marshall, Global Brand Director, Snazaroo – Colart
Sally Marshall is a strong, strategic marketeer with over twenty years of experience in identifying the narrative.   Predominantly, in FMCG and lately the art sector with Colart.  Sally has a fascination with people watching which helps get under the skin of the consumer and bring the story to life. 

Sophie Martin, Insight Manager, UKTV
Sophie Martin is an Insight Manager at UKTV. Her role at UKTV is primarily focussed on TV brands alibi, Drama and W and her day-to-day is varied, working on projects for a number of different departments such as programming, marketing and commissioning. Sophie has over 6 years’ experience in the TV and media industry having previously worked at The Walt Disney Company and BBC Studios.

Stacey Smith, Consultant, Nationwide
Stacey is a consultant for Nationwide, supporting organisational change programmes that result in enhanced company growth and awareness.
She has extensive experience overseeing and supporting a wide range of new operations within Nationwide from implementation to business as usual. Stacey has worked at Nationwide for 24 years in various roles, from customer led to project management.

Bri McIntosh Research Director, Human8
Bri is a Research Director at Human8. He is a specialist qualitative researcher in both online, offline and customer closeness methodologies, with a focus on the financial sector. He is account lead for a number of UK financial services clients, for both online community and ad hoc research and consultancy, with a key focus on ensuring that deliverables provide tangible insights alongside commercially relevant and actionable outputs.
Beyond his consultancy role, Bri is founder and lead for the Financial Services Global Town Hall (FSGTH) forum at Human8. This initiative brings together senior account leads from across the globe to share insights, monitor and map wider micro trends and act as a live knowledge hub within the business.
Bri is also the co-founder of Proud, the global LGBTQIA+ network at Human8 which was introduced to reflect, support and champion colleagues across the globe, and also sits on the Diversity and Inclusion committee within the business.

Anisa Morridadi, Founder and Executive Chair, Beatfreeks
Anisa Morridadi is an award-winning and accomplished entrepreneur, leader and visionary. She has been recognised as "one of the UK’s most radical thinking individuals inspiring change for the better", by The Observer and NESTA. Most notably, Anisa is the Founder and Executive Chair of Beatfreeks - an insight and engagement agency which helps the biggest brands, funders
and institutions of our time earn more relevance with young and diverse audiences. Anisa now pursues a portfolio of interests across multiple sectors as a sought-after speaker, a certified coach, and an accomplished non-executive advisor. Her experience in corporate governance work spans the likes of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the Commonwealth Games, the Creative Industries, Higher Education and Local Government. She is Founder and Chair of We Don't Settle, Trustee of Clore Leadership, and has an impressive cabinet of awards including Forbes 30 Under 30 and an Honorary Doctorate from Aston University which she received at 26.

Martin Oxley, Managing Director, buzzback
Martin has worked in research and insight for 30 years and is driven by the need to better engage with consumers to help clients grow their businesses.
He has been a regular speaker at ESOMAR, MRS and other conferences and has won the best-case study at ESOMAR congress. In 2009, he was awarded the MRS Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to the UK research industry and is also a Fellow of the RSA and a Trustee of Key Changes Music Therapy.
He has worked for the largest global custom research firms IPSOS and TNS and established buzzback’s European presence in 2007 because clients were demanding a more agile technology driven and insightful response to their needs.
His favourite dad joke is: Never trust an atom they make up everything.

Eve Robertson, Associate Director Magenta
Eve is a researcher with 10 years of experience delivering high quality insights to clients globally. With a background in Social Anthropology, she is both a qualitative and quantitative researcher. Starting her career with B2B research she then moved to social policy and market research, engaging both the public and stakeholders with a focus on transport, environment and technology. As a mixed-method researcher, she enjoys employing a wide range of research tools to obtain breadth and depth of insights, and using both types of research outputs in ways that enhance one another, and to tell stories that maximise impact on stakeholders.

Karen Schofield, Head of Qual, Blue Yonder Research
Karen is an award-winning speaker and co-author of an Amazon best-selling book on gender equity. She’s lived and worked in the UK and Asia, and over her 20+ years in research, has worked with – and told research stories to – brand leaders across a diverse range of sectors, markets and cultures. She has also presented talks and run training sessions on creativity, storytelling, consumer psychology, happiness and resilience around the world.
She’s on the Senior Leadership Team at Blue Yonder and has a dual role, heading up both the qualitative insight team, as well as the business’s People Strategy, where she’s responsible for recruitment and retention, internal culture, training, development, wellness and DE&I initiatives.
Outside work she is a committee member of her local theatre group and regularly helps run and performs in local productions, most recently as Rapunzel’s evil stepmother. She’s hoping not to get booed off stage this time though…

Lucy Slavin, Research & Insight Specialist, Youth Sport Trust
Lucy Slavin is a Research and Insight Specialist at the Youth Sport Trust, working across a number of research and evaluation projects. She is a mixed methods researcher with extensive research experience in particular in conducting innovative research with young people.  The Youth Sport Trust research helps the charities mission to harness the power of play and sport in children’s education and development. Her previous experience includes research roles at the British Red Cross and National Foundation for Educational Research. She is a keen runner, has a dog called Whisky and is starting a part time PhD at Loughborough University in July.

Stacey Smith, RD&S Operations and Controls Consultant, Nationwide

Maria Twigge, CSO, FlexMR
Maria has been with FlexMR for 13 years, having studied Psychology Maria joined the team as a researcher and has delivered research for brands including ITV, VISA, British Gas and Morrisons. Maria now leads new business partnerships, designing innovative and agile solutions to insight problems with the FlexMR team to join technology and expertise for business success.