Consumer Consulting Board

Research Director

Stijn graduated as a master in Applied Economics at the University of Leuven, Belgium and as a master in General Management at the Vlerick Business School. Stijn has been working at the InSites Consulting HQ in Europe for close to 8 years, where he was leading one of the research teams. He has cross-sector experience, but his main focus has been on FMCG and Retail. He joined the Direction First team end of 2018 and has experience in both qualitative as well as quantitative research. With a passion for market research and marketing consulting, Stijn is a frequently asked guest lecturer at universities as well as an internal trainer for the InSites Consulting proprietary Academy.

Research Consultant

hirley joined Direction First – InSites Consulting in 2019 and recently graduated from the University of Sydney with a Masters Degree in Management. During her studies, Shirley also completed a placement at Mastercard Australia, where she worked on a market study on the customer service models of various consumer facing technology products.

Prior to joining Direction First – InSites Consulting, Shirley has worked as a Psychology Research Assistant, where she assisted with the research paper, ‘Spelling ability selectively predicts the magnitude of disruption in unspaced text reading’ (2017).

Shirley completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology and has worked in both technical and client-centric roles. She has a strong interest in providing clients with unique insights through quantitative research.

Data Analytics Executive

Carlo graduated in Economics and Business at the University of Verona in 1999. From 2000 he worked in Italy in Banking IT, as a Project Management Sr Analyst first and then as a Sr Functional/Business Analyst. Interested in behavioural research, in 2013 he moved to Sydney where he got an International scholarship from UNSW to pursue a PhD in Consumer Behaviour (Marketing/Economics joint supervision). Since then he has also been tutoring for UNSW School of Business in several undergraduate courses such as Marketing analytics and Marketing Research. Being interested in all aspects of Analytics and Consumer Behaviour, he likes to work at the boundary between academic and market research and is currently part of Directionfirst Analytics team.

Associate Insights Director

Sarah brings over a decade of brand and comms expertise to the table, with experience across UK and Australia. She’s a bit of an ad geek, with extensive experience helping global brands evaluate and develop their ad campaigns.

Sarah has gained a broad array of experience working closely with leading global brands such as Diageo, Unilever, Nestle, Disney, and Fox studios. She has led global and local brand tracking projects, campaign development and consumer segmentations for a range of clients, always with the focus to help them find the story behind the data.

Sarah has a Bachelor of science in Psychology – She is obsessed with discovering what makes consumers tick and helping brands to leverage this to inform their marketing strategy.

Director Insights and Strategy

Yvonne has worked in consumer insights, research and innovation consulting for over 20 years. She founded a successful insight-led innovation and research consultancy for 12 years and is at the forefront of insight generation, as well as pioneering creative tools and techniques.

With her commercial experience, Yvonne leverages consumer insights to help clients shape their strategic direction. Yvonne’s passion is to drive innovation strategy and to fuel expansive growth opportunities for clients. She enjoys cracking complex challenges using creative skills to solve problems. Her tips are to ‘be curious’ (get excited) and make ‘new connections’ to challenge lazy brains that tend to look for the more predictable pathway.

Her extensive experience includes both qualitative and quantitative methods and specialising in insights, immersions, co create, idea generation, strategy, concept development, and value creation. Her industry experience includes FMCG, healthcare, retail, finance, government and deep cluster knowledge in food and beverage.

Yvonne holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Sydney and Post Graduate Marketing from UNSW.

Project and Traffic Manager

As Project and Traffic Manager, Lara works to create efficient workflows across all projects and clients, as well as ensuring the overall well-being of the office.

Lara has worked in market research for the last eight years. She has a background in administration and office management, and has worked in the banking, finance, and legal fields.

Lara enjoys helping her teams succeed by pre-empting challenges and creating a cohesive, happy environment to maximise the outstanding services Direction First provide.

Data Analyst Executive

In his position Raja is all data, all of the time.

His duties span Consumer Consulting Boards and tracking, data cleaning, mining, and analysing data. A true lover of numbers, he has a degree in Science (Mathematics) from the University of Technology Sydney.

Raja’s favourite part of his role at Direction First is that he is in a constant state of learning as he discovers what the data is showing, and he prides himself on his ability to translate that data into actionable results for our clients.

Web Apps Programmer

Jane is responsible for all of the survey programming at Direction First, and the company’s IT administration. She has worked as an IT specialist for over fifteen years across Australia, New Zealand and Brunei. Since 2002, she has worked in survey programming, software and database development and programming, data quality and compliance, and corporate IT support and training.

Jane has highly honed technical expertise in C#.Net developing, SQL scripting and the higher-level programming language Python. She holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Manila in the Philippines.

She also loves the human side of her work at Direction First, working with project managers to deliver tailor-made surveys and insights to our clients.

Data Analytics Manager

Abdus manages the masses of data we create for our clients, ensuring it’s correct and collected properly and provides analytical management.

He holds an Honours and Masters in Statistics. Before joining Direction First, Abdus worked as a researcher, statistician, and data analyst in Australia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia for more than ten years.

Abdus brings to Direction First extensive experience in data collection, cleaning, management, mining, modelling, and statistical analysis, including multivariate techniques.

His particular strength is in advent analytics – modelling for business problems to find solutions for our clients.

Project Coordinator

Ariane is a ‘do-er.’ She coordinates Direction First’s online and offline recruitment and fieldwork activities, and is the key point of contact for the in-house consumer panel, iZatso.

Prior to Direction First, Ariane worked as an assistant manager and business development manager in the retail and IT industries.

Connecting with others is Ariane’s bread and butter. She loves chatting with our community members to engage them in various research projects. She is also passionate about continuously streamlining the office’s business processes, to deliver quality, timely results to clients.

Ariane holds a Bachelor Degree from the University of Philippines, specialising in English Language and Literature. She is currently studying to gain formal accreditation in project management.

Field Manager

Caroline is our Field Manager, responsible for running all of Direction First’s product tests.

Caroline brings a wealth of events management and hospitality experience to the role. She has previously been responsible for all day-to-day operations and events of major hospitality venues in Sydney, and enjoys applying this experience to the fast-paced, people-focussed world of market research.

For Caroline, the best part about working at Direction First is its team philosophy. Everyone looks out for each other, and they are proud to work together to deliver targeted, agile services to clients.

Caroline studied communications and marketing at the College of Charleston in her hometown in South Carolina, USA.

Insights Director

Heidi has worked for over twelve years in qualitative research. Since 2013, she has led research teams at Direction First to collaborate with numerous blue-chip brands across a range of industries, including FMCG, services and retail.

Heidi’s team provides both innovative and traditional qualitative research methods. This includes focus groups, one-on-ones, ethnography, mystery shops and innovative, bespoke social media platforms.

Heidi is passionate about talking with and connecting to people. She understands how powerful genuine engagement with consumers can be, and is a firm believer in two-way communication and collaboration to grow brands. Heidi continuously drives her team to adopt pioneering technologies that support meaningful connections with consumers.

Heidi holds an Honours degree in Anthropology and Psychology from Rhodes University in South Africa.

Associate Insights Director

An award-winning researcher, Pamela has significant experience managing teams in both quantitative and qualitative research. She has been working in research, development and innovation since 2001.  Pamela began her quantitative research career at in FMCG, continuing in product development research work in food science. Pamela has project managed hundreds of sensory tests, and at Direction First led product and concept research, focussing on qualitative research, for four years.

Pamela’s professional interests are in children’s research, consumer consulting boards and gamification. In 2010, she was awarded Best Paper by a Young Researcher at the national AMSRS conference for her work A Child’s Job is to Play, We Should Let Them.  

Pamela has been a member of the InSites Consulting trained global moderator network since 2013, and loves collaborating with brilliant and inspiring researchers in international and national markets.

Pamela holds a first-class honours Bachelor degree in Food Science and Technology and a Masters in Communication in Marketing, both from the University of New South Wales.

Qualitative Research Director

Edward is the head of Direction First’s qualitative insights team.

Edward has over 20 years experience working across South East Asia and Australia in branding, marketing and consumer insights.

Edward is experienced in both innovative and traditional qualitative research methods. At Direction First his team offer focus groups, one-on-ones, ethnography, semiotics, mystery shops and innovative, bespoke social media platforms.

At every stage of the process, Edward provides strategic research expertise to capture the insights that clients need. This means working closely with companies to define the right research questions, choose the best methodologies, undertake the field work, and analyse the results.

For Edward, qualitative research allows clients to really hear what their consumers and communities have to say.

Strategic Executive

Sally joined Direction First in 2016, while still studying. Sally graduated in 2017 with a double degree in Commerce and Science at the University of New South Wales.

Prior to this time, she worked as a research assistant for the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, contributing to the research paper Attentional processing of stimulus-response-outcome chains as a function of psychopathic traits. This paper was presented at the 2016 International Congress of Psychology in Yokohama.

Sally has worked in customer relations and marketing and communications strategy for an Australian not for profit organisation. She has a sound understanding of the ways in which psychology research, innovative use of technology and customer-centric marketing approaches can support Direction First clients.

The variety of work offered at Direction First, across its various research arms, appeals to Sally. She is always willing to put her hands up and get things done.

Strategic Executive

Will works on the qualitative team doing everything from moderating online communities to analysing and writing reports.

Before joining Direction First, Will worked previously in online media. His shift to market research came because he wanted to be closer to the decisions involved in the actual creation of campaigns.

Will has a first-class degree in politics and economics from the UK, and brings a wealth of experience across strategy and marketing.

In his role at Direction First, Will enjoys analysing results and discovering the common themes which ultimately lead to pivotal insight.

Senior Strategic Executive

Leo works within the brand tracking team in data and analysis, questionnaire design, reporting and fieldwork.

Leo graduated from the UADE University in Argentina in 2013. After working in marketing teams for several global companies in Argentina and Uruguay, Leo decided to dive into the world of market research as an analyst.

Leo has a passion for measuring brand performance and understanding the “why” behind the numbers. He takes pride in seeing the impactful results of the work that Direction First does in the market.

Associate Insights Director

Jazz has over ten years experience in the media and marketing industry in Australia. He supports a wide range of companies to track the impact of their brand and campaign advertising and communications. He also informs their media choices and investments, and conducts bespoke research activities that deliver strategic brand and customer insights.

He specialises in quantitative methodologies and analytics, and combines qualitative techniques such as social media listening and online communities.

Jazz is passionate about understanding our changing human relationship to new technologies, and keeping abreast of the new developments in media and emerging technology.

Jazz holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of New South Wales, specialising in Psychology and Marketing.

Senior Project Manager and Research Analyst

In her position as Senior Project Manager, Michelle supports the quantitative and qualitative research teams with setting up qualitative communities and coordinating operations on projects.

Michelle has more than nine years of market research experience, with several years of coordinating countless tracking, product, triangle and shelf tests. Her passion for market research started on a part-time role as a field interviewer while studying her Bachelor of Communications and Research.

Michelle loves witnessing and contributing to new products from start to finish as they make their way to market. With nine years at Direction First, the favourite part of her role is the team that she works with and the support they provide to each other.

Associate Insights Director

Carolina has over 12 years of FMCG research experience in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with a focus on customer sensory solutions.

Having worked across the client, supplier and consultant side of market research, Carolina has invaluable experience in descriptive panels, emotions testing, the creation and implementation of employee panels and project management of consumer sensory research. She is also keenly interested in alternative statistical approaches, working with the Direction First team to stay at the forefront of methodological and analytical innovations.

Carolina brings global experience to the team, having worked and conducted sensory research in Mexico, US and France. She has a degree in Food Science, a Master’s degree in Dairy Science, and has published papers on sensory research.

Carolina prides herself on delivering innovative custom sensory solutions to her clients and being able to see the value of those solutions. Combined with knowledge of her clients’ business it allows Direction First to be agile when scoping and running efficient and smart research.

Head of Client Service

Matthew is passionate about communications and brand strategy.  With more than 12 years’ experience working to inspire brands across Europe and Australia, Matthew brings strong account leadership and a depth of experience in tracking, brands, advertising and creative development to the Direction First team.

He has extensive experience working with leading FMCG brands, banking and service sectors, telecommunications as well as media and entertainment.

Matthew enjoys being a regular speaker at industry conferences where his thoughtful perspectives are always impactful. He is passionate about fusing people, research, and technology to deliver accurate and relevant advice that places consumer insights at the centre of brand direction.

Throughout his career, Matthew has built a strong background in running small and large-scale tracking projects, locally, regionally and globally; and fusing insights across qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Managing Director

Erica has been a leader and innovator in the market research industry for over 20 years. Erica founded the award-winning Direction First in 1997, and has since grown it to be a leading agency in Sydney. Prior to this, she worked for 15 years on the client-side of the FMCG sector, across executive roles in marketing, innovation and business for leading FMCG companies in Australia.

Under her leadership, Direction First has flourished as client centric team. Erica’s expertise, training and commercial acumen underpin Direction First’s agility, future focus and collaborative approach. She has shaped Direction First to provide full-service research offerings that deliver in a fast-paced, evolving brand landscape.

A regular contributor to industry conferences, Erica is passionate about the continuing evolution of market research services. Her views and expertise are frequently sought in the fields of insights, marketing, technology and the future of business. She is not only passionate about uncovering meaningful insights, but also activating insights; ensuring they live and breathe in an organisation.

Since 2015, Erica has been on the global board of Women In Research (WIRe), a professional development organisation for women in market research, working across four continents and also presently sits on the AMSRS editorial panel.

Director, Collective Graphics

Originally from England, Ben has over 10 years experience in all fields of web, branding, animation and video production. With Direction First, Ben has worked on commercial design projects for blue-chip clients such as CBA, BAT, AMP, Nestle, Telstra and Stockland.

With Ben’s guidance and expertise, Direction First stays abreast of the latest trends in web technologies. His key areas of expertise are animation and motion graphics, website design and development, video production and presentation design. He holds a degree in computer science and multimedia.

Ben creates outstanding animation, as well as designing and building platforms for award-winning presentations by the Direction First team. He adds the wow factor to clients’ ideas, bringing them to life in new and amazing ways.