Dr. Anna Tavis is Clinical Professor and Academic Director of Human Capital Management Department at NYU School of Professional Studies, Senior Fellow with the Conference Board, and the Academic in Residence with Executive Networks. Her Harvard Business Review articles with Peter Cappelli HR Goes Agile and The Performance Management Revolution were reprinted in HBR's Must Reads, Definitive Management Ideas of the Year, and in Agile: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review. Her book: Humans at Work. The Art and Practice of Creating a Remote Workplace was published in March 2022. Prior to joining NYU, Dr. Tavis was on the faculty at Williams College, Fairfield University and Columbia University. In business, Dr. Tavis was the Head of Motorola’s EMEA OD function, Nokia’s Global Head of Talent Management, Chief Learning Officer with United Technologies Corp. and Global Head of Talent and Organizational Development with AIG Investments.

Brett was formerly Head of North America Insights for Electrolux where he provided deep, transformative consumer insight, consumer opportunities, and marketplace understanding to drive business decisions related to strategic planning, new product innovation, brand and communication, and in-store sales and merchandising programs.

Previously, Brett served as the PepsiCo Insights lead for the YUM! Foods partnership. In this role, Brett led all PepsiCo food and beverage insights work for innovation and consumer activation. Throughout his eight years with PepsiCo, Brett demonstrated his passion for insights-driven activation and increased sales through his work on the Walmart and Dollar General teams, shopper insights in the PepsiCo global sectors, and with Frito Lay innovation, where he helped launch Doritos Jacked, Ruffles Deep Ridge, and Cracker Jack’D. He’s also been an active mentor within the insights and marketing community to help cultivate success and advancement of actionable insights understanding.

Brett earned his MBA from the University of Texas, Arlington and Bachelor’s Degree in Broadcast Journalism from Brigham Young University.

Dan Heath is the co-author, along with his brother Chip, of four long-running bestsellers: Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments. The Heath Brothers’ books have sold over three million copies worldwide and been translated into 33 languages. Dan’s new book Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen was an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller, and it was included on “best books” lists from Apple, Amazon, the Financial Times, and others.

Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports entrepreneurs who fight for social good. He is an entrepreneur himself, having founded Thinkwell, an innovative education company that next year will celebrate its 25th anniversary. Dan was named in 2013 to the Thinkers 50, a ranking of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers, and also to Fast Company magazine’s list of the Most Creative People in Business. He has spoken to teachers, police chiefs, U.S. senators, interior designers, Navy admirals, health care leaders, marketers, ministers, and countless executive teams, across 26 countries on 6 continents. (He’s still waiting for that invitation from Antarctica.)

Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. One proud geeky moment for Dan was his victory in the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, beating out 13,000 other entrants. He lives in Durham, NC.

Jared Feldman is the founder and CEO of Canvs AI, the fastest and easiest insights platform for analyzing open-ended text. Canvs is used by some of the world’s most admired brands, research agencies, and media & entertainment companies to accelerate time-to-insights, reduce cost, and deepen understanding of consumers.

Outside of Canvs, Jared’s passions include supporting the global entrepreneur community as an angel investor and startup advisor, music production and travel. Jared was previously named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List and was awarded the Advertising Research Foundation’s Great Minds Award. Jared holds two patents in innovative measurement techniques and holds a BFA from New York University.

Jessica is an insights leader with 14 years of experience in consumer insights, market, and user research. With experience delivering actionable insights to stakeholders across industries – from consumer electronics to retail to banking, food, and more – her work champions the voice of the customer in all aspects. For the past five years, she’s led research at National Geographic media, focusing on ways to bring greater value to their subscribers.

Jonathan has spent almost 20 years at companies such as Facebook (Meta), Twitter, and Activision Blizzard. He is a regularly published contributor/speaker in technology on topics ranging from ad-tech to marketing science and consumer psychology with by-lines in TechCrunch, AdWeek, Campaign, and The Drum among others, in addition to interviews featured in The Economist, Business Insider, and other top business publications. Jonathan holds a PhD in Sociology, where his work concentrated on how users of new technology think about concepts such as personal identity, and has been published in academic journals on a diverse range of topics including new media, population displacement, and residential housing discrimination.

Melanie began serving as CEO of the Insights Association on January 1, 2020.

Previously Melanie served as Executive Vice President, Research Science & Data Strategy at Dynata.

A respected, passionate voice on market research trends, standards and quality, Melanie has participated in many industry organizations, events and initiatives. She serves on the executive board of the University of Georgia’s MRII Education program and is an active member of Women in Research (WIRe). Previously Melanie served as President of IA’s Southwest Chapter and as a U.S. representative to ESOMAR.

Melanie has spent more than two decades designing, executing, and interpreting research for agencies and corporations, having started her career at a full-service research firm where she gained a strong research background. For the past decade, Melanie has developed expertise in all forms of digital research including online, mobile and social.

Beginning in 2011, Melanie served as EVP, Global Client Services at Research Now and worked in roles of increasing responsibility in the years following the company’s merger with SSI and subsequent renaming as Dynata. Dynata is the world’s largest first-party data and insights platform with a reach that encompasses 60+ million consumers and business professionals globally and serves nearly 6,000 clients.

Renato Verdugo is a New York–based User Experience Researcher at YouTube where he focuses on understanding and documenting the everyday lives of YouTube Creators. His background in both computer science, and aesthetics & art history merge in the visual ethnography practice he has pioneered at YouTube. In his research, documentary photography and storytelling become tools and vehicles for UX insights. More recently, he founded & leads YouTube's Culture Lab, a research group focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion topics.

As a leader of McKinsey's agile insights capabilities and consumer insights hub, Tamara works with consumer-facing companies to drive brand transformation, growth, and innovation by deeply understanding consumers’ needs, beliefs, behaviors, and preferences. Her experience spans branding, marketing, and strategy decisions that can be shaped and reshaped by the changing consumer. She brings this expertise and passion into her work and partners with organizations that are growing or innovating, as well as with private-equity companies evaluating or nurturing brands with strong consumer pull that will spur substantial growth.

Tron Smith is currently an Enterprise Account Executive at Suzy and Director of Inclusion and Diversity for the South Central chapter of the Insights Association. She previously held sales and advisory roles at AirBnB, Yelp, T-Mobile and Career Builder. She is a volunteer coordinator at the American Liver Foundation and maintains a side business as a stager for AirBnB properties.