Las Vegas Raiders

Session: "Las Vegas Raiders – Putting on a Halftime Show in Las Vegas"

1-on-1 conversation with Brad about some challenges learned over the past 5 years running the gameday entertainment for Raiders home games. We will interlace that with places where guest satisfaction surveys and more importantly, data visualizations have helped Brad make informed decisions and improvements.

About Brad:

Brad Phinney is entering his 22nd season with the Raiders and his third as Senior Vice President, Chief Experience Officer. Brad possesses two decades of experience with Silver and Black and has held multiple leadership positions that have included oversight of content and production. Hired first by Al Davis, Brad has spent the past decade working closely with Mark Davis to shape the look and feel of the team's in-stadium presentation and video and broadcast programming across several platforms.

Session: "From Analyst Gap to AI Advantage: How a CPG Insights Leader Turned Resource Constraints into Strategic Gains"

When Deb Mendez, CPG Insights Leader formerly at Kenvue, faced a resource gap, she didn’t cut corners. She turned to AI—not as a replacement for human expertise, but as a collaborative partner. This session dissects her journey from skepticism to measurable gain, offering a transparent look at where AI delivers speed and where human judgment still remains the essential driver of strategy.

Deb will walk through Kenvue’s innovation gating process, pinpointing the friction points where AI changed the timeline and how AI was leveraged in a way that was safe for the business and empowering to her role. You will see how her team cut trend tracking and scenario planning from weeks to hours, allowing them to explore global and US market trends before committing a single dollar to quantitative testing.

We will move beyond the theoretical to showcase the practical. Deb will share concrete examples of survey automation, translation, and synthesis. She will demonstrate how offloading these tactical tasks cleared the path for her to focus on what matters: strategic thinking and storytelling.

About Deb:

Deborah Mendez is an insights and brand strategy leader with 20+ years of experience driving growth for global icons at Mars, Kraft Foods, and Kenvue beauty brands including Neutrogena, OGX, and Rogaine. She brings expertise across U.S. and international markets. Known for turning complexity into clarity, Deborah leverages emerging technologies to find deep-human truths and empower strategic decision-making. She holds a dual MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and the University of Houston. She is fluent in English and Spanish and plays tennis in her free time.

aytm

Session: "From Analyst Gap to AI Advantage: How a CPG Insights Leader Turned Resource Constraints into Strategic Gains"

Glenn Fleischman, CRO at aytm, sets the stage with the industry's new non-negotiables: data privacy, ISO standards, and the "human-in-the-loop" philosophy. We will address the "black box" problem head-on, discussing why defensible data and ethical AI development are the only ways to build long-term trust in these tools.

Finally, we will look to the future. Both Deb and Glenn will share their perspectives on the next wave of AI capabilities and visions for what lies ahead—from meta-analysis across multiple surveys to AI agents that synthesize data for better concept generation. This is an honest assessment of the current landscape, acknowledging both the opportunities and the limitations.

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for evaluating AI tools, understanding which research tasks benefit most from automation, and maintaining the strategic value of human expertise. The session emphasizes transparency, including discussion of complementary tools beyond any single vendor, and acknowledges both the opportunities and limitations of current AI technology.

About Glenn:

Glenn Fleischman leads growth strategy and client partnerships at aytm. With over 23 years of executive leadership in consumer insights technology and martech SaaS, he operates at the intersection of innovation and client success. He partners with enterprise organizations to evolve their insights functions through collaboration. At aytm, his teams blend advanced technology, AI, and human expertise to help brands find the story in their data and drive growth.

SKF Strategic Insights LLC

Session: "What’s Old Is New Again: The Everlasting Value of Talking to Customers with Win/Loss Interviews"

Research methods come and go over decades, but one thing stays the same: customers are the persistent source of truth for businesses.

Win/Loss Interviews are experiencing a surge in popularity across sales and marketing teams, all while they are rooted in the timeless market research principle of listening deeply to customers. This session will unpack what makes Win/Loss Interviews unique, how they complement existing research methods, and why they offer researchers an opportunity to elevate their strategic impact with stakeholders or clients.

Attendees will learn what Win/Loss Interviews are, how they compare to typical market research, and practical ways to position this approach to clients or internal teams to gain support. They’ll walk away understanding how Win/Loss Interviews can enhance their research toolbox and deepen the strategic value they bring to stakeholders.

About Shaina:

Shaina Forman is the founder of SKF Strategic Insights LLC, a consultancy dedicated to bringing humanity back into business. After spending the first part of her career in marketing, Shaina noticed a pattern: businesses can have an incredible product and a meaningful mission, but without truly understanding the people they want to reach, their efforts can fall flat. She made it her mission to help businesses uncover deep human truths, craft meaningful strategies, and connect more authentically with their customers.

With 15 years of experience in qualitative research, marketing, and strategic consulting, Shaina partners with teams to clarify customer needs, strengthen value propositions, and inspire more human-centered decision making. She holds a B.B.A. in Marketing and Sociology from The University of Georgia.

Paula Rosecky & Company

Session: "Beyond Empathy: What Happens After 'I Hear You'"

Empathy gets a lot of airtime as a “must-have” human skill in research, but in practice, many teams stop at hearing without ever moving into understanding or action. And that’s where real insight lives. As our world and our audiences grow more complex, we need deeper emotional intelligence and more conversational agility to uncover what truly matters beneath the surface.

When we shift from “I hear you” to “I understand you—and here’s what that tells us,” we open the door to insights that fuel more inclusive innovation, clearer decision-making, and products and services that genuinely support people’s lives.

About Paula:

Paula Rosecky is a qualitative insights strategist and facilitator who uncovers the human motivations, decision-making patterns, and emotional drivers that help brands innovate with confidence. Her work across agencies, global brands, and facilitation settings has shown her that empathy begins the conversation, but understanding creates change. She is skilled at navigating emotionally complex conversations, helping people open up to deeper insight. Her work spans global markets, emerging technologies, and values-based design experiences.

In recent years, Paula has applied this lens to a growing passion: helping organizations design products and services that genuinely improve the lives of older adults. She facilitates conversations that surface nuanced needs, overlooked friction points, and opportunities for innovation within this rapidly growing and overlooked segment. Paula’s facilitation style blends practical tools with emotional intelligence, creating experiences where participants and teams feel seen, understood, and ready to act on what matters most.

Djemal Media & Communications LLC

Session: "Storytelling as Lifestyle: A New Operating System for Modern Communication & Human Connection"

We are more than halfway through the decade, and one thing is undeniable: the world as we know it has changed. We’ve entered a new era where communication, identity, and human connection are shifting faster than our language can keep up. Over the past few years, words like “authenticity,” “storytelling,” and “human-first” have become industry buzzwords—but these aren’t trends. They’re indicators of a deeper transformation. They signal a new operating system forming beneath how we think, communicate, and relate to one another.

This session begins by reframing what storytelling actually is. Before it becomes a tool or a technique, storytelling is a lens—a way of seeing, interpreting, and engaging with the world. It’s how we make meaning on a personal level, from the way we process experiences to the way we communicate who we are. We are living in a time where each of us has the ability to document our lives in real time, shaping our personal narrative as we go. Understanding this power is essential in a world that demands clarity, presence, and intention.

From there, we move into the professional scale of storytelling: how narrative shapes the way we communicate ideas, create connection, and present our thinking. Story is not something reserved for marketing or branding; it is the structure that makes information relatable, memorable, and actionable. In an era defined by complexity, story becomes the bridge.

Finally, this session brings storytelling directly into the world of insights. Information alone doesn’t move people—story does. Research becomes meaningful when it is translated into narrative, when it is communicated through a structure the human brain instantly recognizes. Attendees will learn specific storytelling techniques drawn from journalism and modern communication—practical tools they can apply to presentations, reports, stakeholder communication, and the way they bring insights to life.

By the end, participants will understand storytelling not as a task or a tactic, but as a default operating system: the foundation for communication, connection, and clarity in a world where the pace of change demands a new way of thinking.

About Haddie:

Haddie Djemal is an Earned & Owned Media Strategist & Communications Consultant who specializes in helping brands and leaders articulate their story with clarity and impact. As a former national journalist, television host, and newsroom producer, she has spent more than a decade translating ideas into narratives that connect across broadcast, digital, and emerging media. Through her Hire A Journalist Initiative and her consulting work, Haddie brings a journalistic lens to modern communication—offering organizations a perspective rooted in truth, structure, and meaning. Her work sits at the intersection of storytelling, strategy, and the evolving digital landscape—making her a sought-after consultant and speaker for audiences navigating a rapidly changing world.

Microsoft

Session: "How to Leverage our Human Advantage in the New Era"

Fear of the unknown is natural – especially when that “unknown” is AI. This presentation opens by addressing common anxieties in the research community: Will AI make our jobs irrelevant? Will data quality suffer? We’ll spotlight fresh data on how researchers and consumers are coping. For instance, 7 in 10 people feel overwhelmed by today’s information overload – a sentiment AI can actually alleviate. In fact, 84% of people report feeling a positive emotion after using AI to make decisions, with “relief” and “confidence” tied as the top feelings. By sharing these stats, we flip the script: instead of fearing AI, realize it’s already helping many overcome decision paralysis and information fatigue. The message: AI isn’t here to oust us; it’s here to assist us.

Next, we explore how humans + AI are better together. We’ll discuss current use cases demonstrating AI’s supportive role. Did you know AI-augmented decision-makers are 30 percentage points more likely to call themselves ambitious and 14 points more likely to feel confident compared to those who don’t use AI? This “ambition gap” shows that embracing AI can actually boost our professional drive and confidence, not diminish it. I’ll highlight how researchers today use AI as a sidekick and include some real-world examples of how I bring this to life.

Finally, the presentation concludes with how to leverage our uniquely human advantages in an AI-powered workflow. We’ll emphasize qualities only humans bring. Attendees will leave inspired that their human touch is not a “nice-to-have” – it’s a must-have in the era of AI. They’ll have concrete ideas for incorporating AI, armed with the confidence that these technologies will amplify their impact. By the end, the once-intimidating “AI future” will look less like a threat and more like an opportunity, one where sharp human minds and savvy AI tools work in tandem to drive the insights industry forward.

About Nikki:

Nikki Quast is an experienced market researcher who has spent over a decade working in new product development for notable brands like Kraft Heinz and American Family Insurance. Currently leading research for Windows PMM at Microsoft, Nikki focuses her time developing the future of AI, Copilot+PCs, and Windows devices. Results-driven and adept at distilling business objectives into actionable insights, Nikki drives business growth through both consumer and commercial research. She enjoys collaborating on strategy and building up the market research practice.

Interested in learning new methods and growing your research career? Follow Nikki on TikTok or YouTube (@DataDrivenNikki) or join in on conversations via Linkedin.

Ingenium Research

Session: "Culture in Motion: Moving Beyond Acculturation to Cultural Affinity Among U.S. Hispanics"

This presentation reframes how brands and researchers should approach the U.S. Hispanic market by moving away from oversimplified demographic and language-based segmentation toward a cultural affinity lens.

Market Size and Economic Significance

The presentation emphasizes that Hispanics are a vital, not optional, market segment. With 62 million people (19% of the U.S. population), a median age of 28, and $2.5 trillion in buying power, Hispanics make up a market larger than Colombia, Argentina, or Peru. The group generated 13% of U.S. GDP in 2020 and includes over 3.3 million business owners contributing $800 billion annually to the economy. Additionally, 25% of babies born in the U.S. are Hispanic, making this a youthful, expanding demographic.

Foundational Concepts: Race, Ethnicity, and Terminology

The presentation clarifies that race relates to physical characteristics (skin color, hair texture, facial features), while ethnicity encompasses cultural factors—nationality, culture, ancestry, language, and beliefs. Key terminology distinctions matter: "Hispanic" refers to Spanish-speaking descent, "Latino" refers to geographic origin (Latin American), and "Latinx" offers a gender-neutral alternative, though not universally accepted.

Diversity Within the Segment

Hispanics are far from a single identity. While Mexicans make up the largest group, Venezuelans, Dominicans, and Guatemalans are among the fastest-growing communities. Geographic concentration varies greatly: the West Coast and Midwest are mainly Mexican and Central American, while the East Coast features a broader mix including Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and South American communities.

Language Preferences Across Generations

Eight in 10 Hispanic adults prefer speaking at least some Spanish at home. Language preference changes significantly across generations: first-generation immigrants mainly favor Spanish, while second and third generations tend to adopt more English or use bilingual approaches.

Cultural Affinity: Beyond Traditional Acculturation Models

The presentation's main innovation challenges outdated acculturation models that assume linear assimilation based on language use and time in the U.S. Instead, it suggests measuring cultural affinity—how Hispanics engage in cultural celebrations, identify with customs, want to pass traditions on, preserve language preferences across different areas of life, and cherish family and community.

Three Cultural Segments

Research identified three behaviorally distinct segments:

Heritage Guardians (22.2%): Actively protect roots; tradition influences daily decisions; Spanish often functions as the emotional language. Brands must build trust through genuine respect for heritage.

Heritage Blenders (54.4%): Cultural navigators who move effortlessly between Latino and U.S. worlds. Brands succeed by "speaking both languages" and viewing their bicultural pride as a strength, not a conflict.

Heritage Aware (23.4%): Comfortable in mainstream America, but heritage is important through symbolic connections like food, music, and family stories. They reject stereotypes and expect cultural respect within English-centered experiences.

Best Practices and Recommendations

Success requires using cultural screeners—not just demographics—asking about traditions, values, and media habits. Brands must showcase diverse Hispanic backgrounds and experiences and partner with research experts who understand community complexity and nuance. The key takeaway: real opportunity emerges from recognizing internal diversity and rejecting one-size-fits-all solutions.

About Maria:

Maria Lucia Parra is the founder and principal of Ingenium Research, with 25 years of experience in both qualitative and quantitative marketing research. Through Ingenium, Maria has assisted numerous Fortune 500 companies in understanding diverse and multicultural audiences across industries such as CPG, retail, packaging, technology, financial services, entertainment, and healthcare. She is fully bilingual, currently serves as the Orlando Local Event Leader for WIRe, remains active in the Insights Association, and previously led the Latino group at QRCA. A frequent speaker at IIEX, Quirks, and Insights Association events, Maria holds a Psychology degree from Universidad de los Andes, a postgraduate degree in Strategic Marketing from CESA, and advanced moderator training from RIVA in Washington, D.C.

Airbnb

Session: "From Traditional Engagement to Digital Co-Creation: A Quantum Leap in Stakeholder Involvement and Insights Generation"

Stakeholder involvement has always been a cornerstone of qualitative research. Decades ago, clients and stakeholders observed from the backroom, took notes, and provided real-time feedback during group discussions and interviews. Debriefs and collaborative conversations shaped research outcomes, but much of this interaction was limited by the constraints of location, time, and traditional reporting methods.

Today, technology has enabled a quantum leap in how we engage and collaborate with stakeholders. Modern digital platforms make it possible for teams to participate from anywhere, broadening involvement beyond those physically present. Tools like Miro and Figma empower stakeholders to contribute not just during live sessions, but asynchronously—adding comments, building on each other's ideas, and revisiting insights long after the initial fieldwork is complete. This expanded interactivity makes qualitative research a more dynamic, inclusive, and ongoing process.

In this session, we’ll explore how digital advances have transformed stakeholder and researcher collaboration, particularly during the fielding and analysis phases where insights are developed and refined. You’ll discover proven strategies for fostering engagement and co-creation using interactive boards, ensuring that research outcomes reflect diverse perspectives and are truly actionable. We’ll demonstrate how these tools make it easier to capture, organize, and track feedback—turning insight generation into a participatory journey rather than a solo endeavor.

Whether you’re new to remote collaboration or looking to deepen stakeholder involvement in your qualitative projects, this session will equip you with practical techniques and creative inspiration. Join us to experience the next era of qualitative research—where technology doesn’t just connect us, but empowers everyone to be a co-creator of value, insight, and impact.

Join us to reimagine your approach to qualitative research and discover how technology can turn your stakeholders into co-creators of value every step of the way.

About Susan:

Susan Blank, Ph.D. is an insights leader who blends compelling storytelling, human empathy, and advanced analytics to drive innovation and growth. She currently conducts user experience research for Airbnb, leveraging 20+ years of experience leading mixed-methods research teams and cross-functional initiatives to transform research into clarity, alignment, and actionable strategies. Her expertise spans B2C and B2B across industries including tech, finance, healthcare, education, CPG, retail, and real estate. Susan has guided positioning, product strategy, and user experience for brands such as Google, Nike, VSP, Opendoor, Annie’s, and Kaplan. Experienced rallying teams in both startups and complex enterprises, she thrives at the intersection of creativity and practice. Susan is dedicated to helping organizations transform data into market wins and memorable user experiences.

Estro Communications

Session: "Speeding Up Thinking — Not Replacing It: From Data to Insight, Faster"

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of the research conversation, yet many insights professionals remain uncertain about where it truly adds value — and where it introduces risk. This session reframes AI not as a replacement for researchers, but as a tool for speeding up thinking, not replacing it, helping teams move from data to insight faster while maintaining human judgment, context, and methodological integrity.

The presentation begins by placing AI within the historical evolution of the insights industry, showing how each technological shift — from early statistical software to online research platforms — has reduced friction rather than eliminated expertise. AI represents the next step in that progression, with the potential to compress timelines and expand scale when used thoughtfully.

Attendees will explore how AI can support quantitative, qualitative, and full-service research workflows in practical ways, such as accelerating preparation, organizing large volumes of unstructured feedback, identifying emerging patterns, and producing first-pass summaries. Special emphasis is placed on qualitative research, where AI can assist with listening at scale while leaving interpretation and meaning-making firmly in human hands.

The session addresses common misconceptions about AI, including the belief that it “finds insights” or replaces analytical thinking. Instead, participants will learn how AI excels at pattern recognition and synthesis, and why researchers remain essential for framing questions, validating outputs, and translating findings into decisions that matter.

A simple, three-layer framework is introduced to help participants responsibly integrate AI into their own work: using AI for speed, scale, and support, while reserving insight, judgment, and recommendation-making for human expertise. Real-world examples and practical guidance will help attendees see how these principles can be applied immediately, regardless of organization size or research specialty.

Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how AI can reduce manual workload, increase analytical throughput, and free researchers to focus on what they do best — asking better questions, interpreting nuance, and delivering insight that drives action.

About Christian & Steve:

Christian and Steve Estrellado are Managing Partners at Estro Communications, where they lead the design and execution of complex digital business solutions at the intersection of insights, technology, and decision-making. Their work spans CRM automation, AI-enabled workflows, and an AI-creative studio built to help organizations move from raw data to action faster — without sacrificing human judgment or methodological rigor.

With backgrounds rooted in both strategy and execution, Christian and Steve specialize in translating research outputs into scalable systems that support analysis, synthesis, storytelling, and activation. Their approach focuses on using AI to speed up thinking, not replace it, reducing friction across research and business workflows while preserving trust, nuance, and accountability.

Known for their practical, operator-led perspective, they work closely with insights teams and leaders to modernize how intelligence is processed, communicated, and used to drive better decisions.