ESOMAR Connect | Bucharest 2023

Alina Serbanica is Senior Vice President at Ipsos, leading the worldwide Total Operations Data Privacy inside the company.

She has over 30 years of experience in market research and her broader expertise on both online and offline, on delivering market research services and on handling global online operations represent her great asset for dealing with the new data privacy environment, under a very dynamic pace technology, big data, social media, passive data collection and artificial intelligence have nowadays. Alina is member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) and she is part of the ESOMAR Liaisons taskforce in the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), working in the Technical Committee dealing with the ISO 20252 for Market Research.

Since April 2023, Alina is Member of the ESOMAR Council (Board of Directors) for the 2023 – 2024 elected mandate. Previously, between 2010 and 2023, she served as the ESOMAR Representative in Romania, and she is co-founder member of The Romanian Society of Marketing and Public Opinion Research (SORMA), currently the President of SORMA.

Vlad Barbu is a Senior Consultant within the Retailer Services team at NielsenIQ. In this role, he collaborates closely with a portfolio of international and local retailers, identifying current market trends in FMCG, business optimization opportunities, and providing support to assess sales performance. His previous professional background is sculpted by over eight years of activity in Sales and Marketing, enhanced by involvement in several entrepreneurship projects co-funded through the European Union budget.

With a background in Sociology, Communication & Public Relations, she started her journey in market research 15 years ago and what a joy ride has been!

Joggling with FMCG, healthcare and services has gained know-how in a wide range of qualitative methodologies, with a soft spot for ethnography and creative workshops. Her purpose is to bring together the consumer, the brand, and the client in order to breathe life into insights in a meaningful manner, reason why she prefers strategical studies.

A dog and a human person alike, dedicates her spare time to traveling, exploring, and rescuing animals.  Her motto is „What makes a human great can make a brand greatly human”.

Ioana’s background in Marketing, Market Research and Public Relations has provided her with varied skills when it comes to research technical knowhow, consumer behaviour and marketing strategies. Her project management certification and her passion for logistics enabled her to coordinate complex research projects in an effective and proactive manner.

The 5 years at ISRA turned Ioana into a keen believer in the power of well-balanced teams of researchers, as she strongly trusts that a MR project’s success is dependent on fruitful collaboration between all parts involved. She is dedicated to always bringing warmth into ISRA’s partnerships.

Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. So is any high-performing researcher.

Diana is a playful insights’ explorer, Design Thinking facilitator, and consultant with a PhD in Communication Studies and a strong background in academic & marketing research. She has expertise in brand strategy and is particularly interested in addressing the consumer and employee experience within the broader dynamics of the digital society and socio-cultural trends.

Julien is a market research consultant and design thinking facilitator. He has strong experience in teams’ development and business growth and is very passionate about consumer understanding, CX, trends and innovation.

Roxana is a calm and collected person, who looks for meaning in everything she does. Her professional background in process improvement and CX design, combined with well-developed empathy skills, are crucial in her role as Head of CX in OTP Bank. She stands for honesty, compassion, and collaboration within and among teams, and advocates for self-awareness as one of the most effective and empowering ways to achieve professional and personal success. 

Cori Cimpoca is a professional with over 16 years of experience in marketing and market research. Cori holds an MBA from Cotrugli Business School, a Master's degree in Public Relations from UBB Cluj-Napoca and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from UBB Cluj-Napoca. 

In 2013, Cori founded MKOR, the Market Opportunity Research agency, offering comprehensive marketing services from data. Since 2020, MKOR combines market research with automated marketing, offering an innovative approach to market research.

In 2021, MKOR launched Consumer Trends.Live, a platform for real-time market monitoring from a consumer perspective. The industries included in the study are Fashion, Beauty & Care, Jewellery, IT&C, Electronics & Appliances, Furniture & Home Decor, DIY.

Qualitative research consultant with 15 years of experience in the field. Holding a MA in Sociology of Consumption, Iulian specializes in ideation and insight-generating workshops, leveraging his education and experience into behavioural economics. He has worked mainly on the local Romanian market, but not only, with major research companies, boutique agencies, representing international agencies for studies in Romania and final clients alike. Tried to prove himself useful on a variety of industries such as retail, FMCG, banking, telecom, political parties, tobacco, pharma, betting, and gambling, both in B2C and B2B studies. On a personal level, he states 'it was a matter of getting to know myself through understanding the people around me'. As a professional, he believes it`s a mandatory need to thoroughly understand your target in order to create tailor-made products, strategies, services and campaigns. Favourite motto is 'People hear and see statistics, but they feel stories'.

As a serial entrepreneur, I founded and grew several companies in the market research field. Growing businesses is not a breeze, but do you know what I really found difficult? Making complex things simple. That's what I've been working on in recent years with Frappe Digital.

My dream is to make market research simple (again).

Andra is keen on discovering insights about brands and advertising.  She has been navigating the waters of marketing research for 19 years, from the times in which the biggest satisfaction came from designing complex studies and from the countless hours spent digging for insights in search of answers to the client questions; times in which the same ship took water whenever seeing how little of the research was actually used. Currently, Andra is grateful for the opportunity of seeing how validated approaches and meta-learnings save so much from the time spent analysing countless strings of data and convert it to valuable time dedicated to actionable recommendations and fruitful conversations with the clients.

Catalina has been part of this industry for over 22 years and has experienced its moments of all kinds; in turn she has had years of growth and joy and years with many challenges, which have built an extremely flexible and empathetic way of looking at work and life. Catalina is a researcher defined by a genuine curiosity and over the years she has gone through just about every type of approach from Panels to qualitative and quantitative to consulting. And now here we are at the dawn of another transformational leap in our industry, and she is extremely curious to see where they will take us.

He began his career in market research in 2007 and has spent the last three and a half years in the iSense Solutions team. From the position of Quantitative Research Director, Andrei undoubtedly embodies the spirit of the company. He has a PhD in sociology, with a solid academic background, and he likes to combine methodological rigour with the creative spirit of marketing. He loves brand and communication research and is an ardent follower of the school of thought promoted by Byron Sharp. Over the past two years, he has designed and coordinated the weekly Consumer Stress Score study, developed in iSense Solutions as a free tool to help customers and companies navigate the challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In his free time, he likes to unravel the mysteries of civil law as a student at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest.

Oana Popa Rengle has a lifelong passion for qualitative research, with 24 years of experience.

In June 2004 she set up Anamnesis as the first qual–research boutique in Romania. Since 2017 she is consulting independently on qualitative research and strategic insight integration into business. She is also a feature editor for the Global Section of Views, the magazine of QRCA, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association.

In 2022 she received the ESOMAR Silver Research Effectiveness Award, alongside client lab test company Synevo, for the outstanding contribution of qualitative research in the development of VR Kids technology, a VR assisted approach for drawing blood from children.

In addition to being a research practitioner, Oana is a certified Idea Generation and Creative Problem-Solving processes facilitator, and a psychotherapist practicing Systemic Family Therapy.

Simona Moisescu started working in marketing research in 2005 as an unpaid intern, never thinking that a summer job would end up being a career. 17 years as a quantitative researcher at Kantar Romania helped her gain extensive experience with most types of research projects and methodologies, from product testing and brand tracking to Conjoint analysis and consumer experience. Since the beginning of 2023, she is the proud marketing researcher of Synevo team, helping her colleagues take data driven decisions and explore clients’ needs and behaviour.

Ioan has started his career in market research over 25 years ago, worked his way through almost all research jobs, and is currently general manager for Mercury Research. His research expertise is complemented by advertising experience and academic work. Ioan holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Bucharest, and specializations in political studies and business management from the University of Texas, ASEBUS and the University of Washington. He also teaches courses on advanced analysis methods, market research and marketing.

Grant is an award-winning content expert, narrative strategist, speechwriter, ghostwriter and storytelling trainer. He has more than 25 years’ experience as a journalist, leading teams of writers and editors, in print and digital operations across the world. He now runs Every Rung, which specialises in storytelling to inspire internal and external audiences, through skills masterclasses, thought leadership and constructing corporate narratives. Every rung of the storytelling ladder to influence, persuade and engage audiences. His unique journalistic approach helps insight and research teams to translate data-rich and AI-inspired material into stories that inspire faster decision-making. Current clients include Philips, PepsiCo, AstraZeneca, GSK, BT, NEOM/Oxagon, ABInBev and HSBC. He continues to provide journalism for a number of global platforms, is a keynote speaker and has been a co-presenter for Talk Radio’s weekend breakfast show.