ISSUE #9: FALL 2010

Promotions shine spotlight on Fifteen team members who have excelled, made a difference

Although KN is filled with star performers, a few always stand out. They have a vision of how things could be; push themselves – and others – to give their very best; and bring about change that benefits all of us. We are lucky indeed to have fifteen such people to recognize and celebrate through our latest promotions; you will likely know most or all of them – because they do not hide out or stay silent. They come from all areas of the company, and the country; their backgrounds, in some ways, could not be more different. And yet they all are making a major difference for KN – a pattern that we are very certain will continue. Congratulations, and thank you!
– Simon

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Joe Arcaroli
Vice President, Business Insight Project Management

Since joining KN in 2007, Joe has proven himself to be extraordinarily capable in managing and building the Field function, developing others who can step up and establishing great relationships with his internal clients in both the BI and S2 SBUs. Joe is also extremely skilled at designing effective and efficient workflow processes. In this new role, Joe will assume oversight of the scheduling function for Project Management in the BI unit. Partnering with Phil, he will provide a senior East Coast presence and will be able to meet in person frequently with East Coast senior and junior Client Service staff. Joe's taking on this role will allow Phil to address aspects of increased efficiency and training that should yield significant return in improved profitability and capacity.

Courtney Buzzell
Director

Courtney stands out as someone who is passionate about her clients, about doing the best and highest quality work, about learning and growing – and about expanding the KN business. Courtney has built upon her academic experience prior to KN, quickly mastering custom research, design, analytics, training, business development, and relationship building with clients. In addition to a full account and project workload, Courtney took on the role of product manager for the Quale service with Pat Graham, doing company-wide training and implementation of this successful service. Courtney never fails to raise her hand to gain new skills, assist her colleagues, or provide valued support to her clients.

Erica DesRoches
Vice President & Group Account Director, Business Insight

Erica has delivered significant growth in the revenue and profit from her client base, many of whom she had to build from the bottom up, through delivering outstanding and high quality research design and analytics to help those clients address their business issues. She is a great coach, teacher and developer of her team in support of their professional growth and their role in delivering outstanding results to their clients. She is a great ambassador for KN, internally and externally.

Heather Figlar
Project Director, Pharma, Business Insight

Heather joined KN in June 2008 with a year's experience at a small market research company. She has been a key contributor to a wide variety of projects, from message tests to large multi-wave trackers to major segmentation projects. She has demonstrated a strong ability to manage complex projects very independently – most recently the ESPN Football Total Touch program – while simultaneously leading other, smaller projects. Heather has also been an outstanding mentor to a summer intern and a new RA hire, helping them come on board and make contributions quickly. Heather's colleagues and clients appreciate her positive attitude and the fact that her "can do" attitude always results in "got done."

Joe Garrett
Senior Vice President, Federal Statistical Surveys, Government & Academic Research

Joe is promoted on the strength of his efforts and success in building our Federal sector practice in Washington, DC. Since joining Knowledge Networks in January, 2008, Joe has led KN’s efforts to establish a prime contacting vehicle with the Federal government called "MOBIS." With the MOBIS agreement now in place, Joe successfully navigated the bureaucratic intricacies of the Department of Health and Human Services to secure our first – and very substantial – study won using the MOBIS contract vehicle. In addition, Joe has played a key role in providing managerial quality control of Government & Academic research – budgeting for proposed new studies, giving his colleagues the benefit of his advice and insights on complex budgets. Joe has also led KN efforts to make new "friends" in other Federal agencies, such as GAO, Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve, among others. We look to forward to significant expansion of our Federal sector business under Joe’s leadership.

Erlina Hendarwan
Associate Vice President, Operations

In her current role as Director of Panel Operations, Erlina has really distinguished herself. She is the person most responsible for the day-to-day handling of KN's important panel assets – overseeing the implementation of recruitment, ongoing maintenance, and database upkeep. Working with an ambitious set of KPIs, Erlina plays a vital role in guiding us to accomplish our panel ambitions. Erlina is one of the strongest Project Managers in the entire company, having played prominent roles in the planning and execution of some of KN's most complex initiatives. KPL start-up, operationalizing ABS recruitment, and WebTV retirement are just a few examples of mission critical projects that have benefited from her leadership and guidance.

In addition to all of this, Erlina regularly assists Charles in many of his methods research endeavors. She is a key member of the Panel Steering group – providing input to strategy and guiding the tactical execution of these strategies. Erlina has also distinguished herself as a leader in the Panel department and has rightfully earned the respect of her peers. She is hard working, extremely dedicated, and a valued member of KN's Leadership Team.

Albina Itskhoki
Vice President, Business Insight, Media

Albina has shown tremendous growth and promise at every level of her career at KN. Upon joining us, she quickly mastered custom research (and English!) in the CPG space, building on her Nielsen client service experience in Russia. Over the next few years she then demonstrated great mastery of the Pharma sector, including but not limited to the ability to translate complex analytics into compelling stories and recommendations for clients, training others in analytics, and building and growing client relationships. Albina is driven to take on even the most difficult of clients and projects. Thanks to the quality of her work, we not only developed repeat business with new clients, but received referrals to new prospects.

Albina will work as a partner with Dave Tice as co-leaders of the Media practice. Her skills, creativity, and dynamism in analytics, workflow, and engaging with clients will be very complimentary to Dave's and the Media team's extensive knowledge and experience with the traditional media business.

Naomi Keller
Business Development Associate Director, Service Bureau

Over the past two years, Naomi has developed mastery of the skills needed to develop costs and proposals for our Service Bureau business, resulting in the tripling of that revenue over the past two years. Naomi has engendered tremendous loyalty from those clients due to her never failing responsiveness and she is a great ambassador for KN both internally and externally

Poom Nukulkij
Senior Project Director, Survey Science

Poom has ably led our TESS research program for over five years, as well as our initial CBS instant polls as project manager. He managed the Defense Department ad tracker for over three years, and has served as a panel survey expert for our Chicago staff these past two years. Poom is a tireless project manager dedicated to paying attention to project details that delight our customers.

Lisa Paixao
Senior Research Analyst, Business Insight Project Management

Lisa joined KN in October 2008, graciously attending her first Project Management National Meeting before actually starting work as a KN employee. Working on projects ranging from the smallest trackers to a 16-month-long pair of segmentation projects, Lisa has developed a strong mastery of the KN workflow. She takes full ownership of project tasks, using her organizational skills and attention to detail to let her project managers focus on higher-level activities. In the same fashion, Lisa can swoop into any task on a project, with no background, and do whatever the project team needs.

Christina Pate
Project Director, KN Dimestore

Since Christina started at Knowledge Networks, she has thrown herself into the work with unparalleled energy. Often first in and last out in the office, she has taken on an incredible amount of projects, managing them all with aplomb. In addition to being constantly praised by clients and becoming the resident expert on project implementation for KN Dimestore, Christina has taken on the added responsibilities of training new account managers and revising and improving our processes. In her new role as PD, Christina will further focus on supporting clients and other team members, but also take on more responsibility for technical client implementations across accounts.

Rupa Patel
Senior Research Analyst, Business Insight Project Management

Since joining KN in November 2008, Rupa has developed a powerful mastery of all aspects of the KN workflow, as evidenced by her ability to drop into any project at a moment's notice and help a project team out of a jam. Most significantly in 2010, Rupa assumed a key role in training and supporting the Ugam PM staff. She worked alongside them in India for almost all of June and has conducted daily check-in calls ever since then with the Ugam PM staff, using these calls to identify and deliver against targeted training needs. Rupa's colleagues and clients deeply appreciate her uncanny ability to stay calm and focused in the face of whatever unexpected events and pressures may confront her and her projects.

Eric Robertson
Project Director, CPG/Retail, Business Insight

Eric joined KN in February 2009 and quickly demonstrated strong performance in all technical areas of KN work. He now manages his projects very independently, including analysis and insightful report writing. Eric has an uncanny ability to detect when something is amiss in project data and does an outstanding job of troubleshooting the problem and rectifying it quickly and efficiently. He has also managed multiple team members across lengthy project delivery cycles. Eric's colleagues and clients know that they can count on him to go the extra mile to support their needs.

Thomas Subias
Associate Vice President, Operations

As the department head of Online Survey Development, Thomas performs one of the more difficult roles within the organization. The nature of OSD's work requires that they handle a good deal of complexity in what are often compressed timelines. Every online survey is essentially an application development exercise. Through Thomas' guidance and leadership, the team consistently generates high quality work in a very organized fashion.

Thomas had done a superb job of integrating the team at Ugam. Through his stewardship we have created a well trained, highly scalable, and cost effective pool of resources to augment the KN team. Success in this area has measurably increased our flexibility and overall effectiveness. Thomas' approach to this initiative has become the model for other functions within our business to follow. He has created a great partnership with our offshore vendors.

In addition to superb oversight of the OSD function, Thomas continues to make a variety of extremely important contributions. Most recently he has lead the development of more sophisticated online data collection techniques made possible by the retirement of the WebTV, and taken on responsibility for the MTA based survey programming team. Thomas is an expert in KN workflow, and he eagerly imparts this knowledge by regularly training new staff. Members of his team are regularly singled out for their contributions and heroics. He is extremely well organized, highly professional, and an important member of the KN Leadership Team.

Ben Theriault
Vice President, Sales, KN Dimestore

The fact that KN Dimestore's numbers are more than 30% over original budget is mostly thanks to Ben's unrelenting sales efforts and his ability to build lasting and solid relationships with new clients. Originally not from the research world, Ben has shown his aptitude to pick up the lingo, talk the talk, and represent our capabilities in a favorable yet honest fashion. Some of his successes this year are the signing of several annual agreements (with 24/7 Media, Interclick and Buzzlogic), as well as striking agency wide agreements with Publicis and GroupM. His efforts at Mediavest paid off with two very large P&G agreements. Recently, Ben has taken on the role of mentoring our new sales Directors (Matt and Cliff) and training them in the best ways of conducting sales for KN Dimestore. Without him, KN Dimestore wouldn't be where we are; and Ben's move into the VP role will allow him to apply his skill sets in an even broader fashion.

Summer, Fall "Getaways" help KN offices relax, bond

Over the course of the Summer and early Fall, many of the KN offices took time out to "chillax" together – taking in a ball game, playing some volleyball, or just enjoying a social evening with a view of the Chicago skyline.

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Needham: Red Sox game
June 30

Chicago: Drinks at The Wit Hotel
Sept. 24

Menlo Park: Picnic at Great America
Sept. 18

New York/Mt. Arlington/Cranford: Games, food and conversation at New Jersey's Forest Lodge
Aug. 20

Cincinnati/Fulfillment: Reds baseball game
Sept. 10

View Slideshow of Getaways

Rupa visits Mumbai to train KN's newest Ugam team members

This summer, Rupa Patel (Research Analyst; Chicago) spent a month at the Ugam offices in Mumbai, India, bringing our new team members there up to speed. Here is Rupa's account of her visit!

(from left) Taher, Divyesh, Urvashi, Rupa, Vivek and Shamim.
Click here or image to enlarge.

In an effort to get the Ugam team (Urvashi, Shamim, and Divyesh) in sync with our U.S. offices, I was provided the opportunity to work alongside them in India. This included allowing them to shadow my projects, providing assistance with their assignments, daily trainings on KN methods and procedures, and teamwork building.

It was very interesting to learn how businesses across the globe function. The Ugam team has adapted to our needs, including working our hours and speaking our language; my hours there were the equivalent of 6PM to 3AM IST (India Standard Time)! But there are also a lot of similarities – everyone at Ugam is highly motivated, friendly, and eager to learn. The office structure and environment are also similar. Except for the monsoons and 100-degree heat, it felt a lot like home!

For fun, the Ugam PMs would take me sightseeing; one time, Shamim and Divyesh took me on a tour of the Indian "Hollywood," where I attempted to spot celebrities. And it was always interesting each day as we tried to figure out what new food to try; at Ugam, the teams generally try to eat dinner together each night, and I was always included in their mealtime. This was a great opportunity for me to get to know them better.

My Mumbai trip for KN is something I will never forget, and was also a great way to get to know these important new KN team members. I encourage everyone to utilize their skills, as they are excellent at what they do. I'd love to go back!

An Action-Packed Week for KN – Four Major Client Events in Two Days

It was a truly busy 48 hours for KN on October 27th and 28th, with no less than four major events taking place in the New York area:

• Survey Science staged client events on successive mornings in D.C. and at New York's Yale Club; Cliff Zukin of Rutgers University (a Survey Science client) was the keynote speaker at both, and we had healthy attendance for clients in government, policy, and academia.
• Pat Graham was the luncheon speaker at the ARF's Social Media Bootcamp on the 27th in New York
• Clients, family members, and current and former KN staffers gathered at New York's elegant Metropolitan Club on the afternoon of the 28th to celebrate and remember Maura Clancey

We will share more details of these events in the coming weeks; for the meantime, take a look at the pictures from our tribute to Maura.

Giving Back: KN Comes Out for the Alzheimers Walk

Twelve members of the KN team, and some of their family members, participated in the 2010 Memory Walk, to benefit the NY Chapter of the Alzheimers' Association. They enjoyed the 2-mile walk on a beautiful Sunday in Riverside Park in NYC. The Knowledge Networks team raised over $12,000 in pledges to support research in addressing this devastating disease. Our thanks to all who walked, as well as those who could not be there but still contributed!

(from left) Ashvika and Anjalika Bandaru, Rich Catrone, Lynne Armstrong, Rachel Harriett, Audrey Rosen with husband David and son Jake, Raleigh Cobb, Irina Kosoy, Cristina Rugolo, Danielle Grant and son TJ.Click here or image to enlarge.

Nine new team members bring fresh perspectives, talents

KN continues to attract top talent who bring distinctive expertise and new points of view to our offices. Our newest crop of arrivals spans almost every office and a variety of teams; some you may already have gotten to know, while others just joined KN. Please welcome them all!

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Clifton (Cliff) Botelho, Jr.
Sales Director, KN Dimestore – New York

Before joining KN, Cliff served as Director of Business Development for eType USA, responsible for all U.S.-based operations and company growth through acquisition of privately held companies and online web sites.

He worked directly with major clients to implement online advertising initiatives through a mix of display and video ads. He also has strong relationships with key online advertising agencies.

Alicia DePalma
Field Director – Mt. Arlington

Alicia brings with her 10 years of experience in the market research industry. At her last position at Markettools, Alicia worked side by side with both Sales and Client Services ensuring superior service to their collection of healthcare, consumer and B2B clients.

John Dowd
Research Analyst – Needham

John comes to Knowledge Networks from an editorial position in insurance compliance solutions. Originally from Mayo, Ireland, John has been living in the Boston area for four years. He completed his B.A. in Psychology and L.L.M. in International Human Rights Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, before undertaking various research and editorial positions in and around Boston. He enjoys travelling, biking, and exploring local restaurants. He is a failed homebrewer, and currently lives in Brookline with his wife, cats, dogs, and foster-puppy.

Karen Goldstein
Vice President, CPG/Retail – Chicago

Karen brings nearly 20 years of experience in consumer research to KN. She spent six years at Synovate in an account management role, focusing on concept & product testing, brand equity, shopper insights, segmentation and A&Us. Before working in custom research, Karen worked with many top-tier CPG food manufacturers at The NPD Group's National Eating Trends and at Information Resources (IRI). Her last position at IRI was in the Analytic Insights Group, where she was responsible for the design and analysis of in-market testing studies, as well as modeling and advanced Panel analyses.

Karen holds a Bachelor or Arts degree in Psychology from Washington University, St. Louis, MO, and an MBA from Loyola University-Chicago. In addition to loving travel and music, she is a bit of a self-proclaimed foodie. In her spare time, she serves on the Executive Board and volunteers in a restaurant-style café at Inspiration Corporation, a not-for-profit dedicated to helping homeless and working poor Chicagoans

Jean Lin
Controller – Menlo Park

Jean comes to KN with over 13 years in finance and accounting experience overseeing audit, tax, general accounting, SOX, and payroll. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley and started her career as an auditor at Deloitte & Touche in San Jose.

She is a CPA, and she has worked at various start-ups and publicly-traded companies. Her last position was the Controller of a publicly-traded company at Alvarion, Inc.

Keith Marshak
Project Director, KN Dimestore – New York

Keith brings over 15 years of experience in the marketing world to KN. Most recently Keith has moved into the digital world, first assisting the Business Development of Nickelodeon.com, then later in search at Yahoo! Search Marketing and most recently in the social media worlds of MySpace and Wetpaint. In his off time, Keith enjoys cooking, reading, camping, paintball and World of Warcraft. Keith also was a child model who appeared in photo shoots for Heinz ketchup, Adidas clothing, Hush-Puppies shoes and many other brands.

Kelly Pinola
Research Analyst – New York

Kelly recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in spring 2010 with degrees in Marketing and Economics and a minor in Psychology. While attending the university Kelly acted at captain of the nationally ranked UMass Dance Team and studied abroad in Paris and Berlin. In Summer 2009 Kelly was a Marketing Research and Sales Analysis intern at Sony Music Entertainment. As an intern she analyzed different online music purchase trends and provided pricing recommendations. She was also in charge of a companywide experiment to determine the best possible digital sales forecasting method. In her spare time Kelly enjoys dancing, swimming, and reading.

Wan Yan
Research Analyst – Menlo Park

After working here as an intern for two months, Wan joined Knowledge Networks in August as a Research Analyst for Government and Academic Research. Wan holds a M.S. in Economics from the University of Missouri and is working toward getting her Ph.D. degree in Management from the Trulaske College of Business at the University of Missouri. Prior to moving to the United States, Wan worked for Deutsche Bank China Branch and Colgate-Palmolive China as a Key Client Associate.

Brian Weberman
Research Analyst – Chicago

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a BBA in Finance & Business Economics in 2005, Brian went on to work for J.H. Ellwood & Associates, LLC, an institutional investment consulting firm in Chicago, as a Research Analyst. During his three year tenure, he became a leading member of the Growth Team and managed client assets totaling more than $5 billion. In May 2008, Brian left Ellwood to pursue an MBA and subsequently graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame's Accelerated MBA Program in May 2009. Since then, he has helped co-found HelpMyPlanet, LLC, a startup research company dedicated to the advancement of "green" growing techniques and processes in the agricultural and horticultural industries.

KN Dimestore goes to the ducks – potential clients follow (again)…

Pulling a page from the Ben Theriault playbook, Matt Porreca – KN Dimestore's new West Coast sales rep, and one of our new KN parents – made a splash at the recent iMedia Breakthrough conference in Palm Springs. He used the promise of a rubber duck race as an excuse to talk to pretty much anyone in attendance, and then staged the race in the hotel swimming pool – using a box of ducks he picked up at a local convenience store. The results: conversations with over 45 potential clients, plus a welcome diversion from the usual conference agenda. Resourcefulness is Dimestore's middle name, so we have a feeling that Matt will be fitting right in with his new team! :-)

View Slideshow of Duck Race

Mt. Arlington, Cranford to meet in the middle, creating new Roseland office

Early next year, our two New Jersey offices will become one. Mt. Arlington (about half of our Pharma/Health Care team) and Cranford (which includes Media, Marketing, Field and Panel personnel) will combine at a newly renovated office space in Roseland. The building at 103 Eisenhower Parkway backs onto a beautiful wooded area and has access to a cafeteria and other facilities at a companion building just across the parking lot.

Watch KN People for photos of the big move!

A KN baby boom: Four team members become parents

Although KN People generally focuses on our lives and interactions at work together, we could not help but note a KN ‘baby boom’ over the past couple months – with no less than four KN employees welcoming babies into their homes. So we wanted to share news (and pictures) from these growing broods.

Sean William born August 3rd to Barb Devlin	Elizabeth born June 16th to Albina Itskhoki
Samson Martilis born September 12th to Matt Porreca	Lola Renee born August 12th to Mary DePalma