Women in Analytics: Mentoring Meetup: Three Leaders, Three Stories
February 9 @ 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST
Gloria Cox
Senior Partner,
The Cambridge Group
Gloria Cox is a Senior Partner with The Cambridge Group. Previously she was an Executive Vice President at Nielsen, serving as the US Commercial Leader for their 18 largest global national clients, including Nestle, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Colgate, and Kimberly-Clark. Gloria joined Nielsen in 2009 through the acquisition of The Cambridge Group, where she was the Managing Director.
During her 20 years at Cambridge, she specialized in consumer products and services clients, working with them to develop market driven growth strategies through consumer targeting, brand strategy and positioning, and new product development. She has extensive experience in working with clients to identify current, latent and emerging profitable demand.
Prior to joining The Cambridge Group, Gloria was an Engagement Manager and core member of the Consumer Goods Practice at McKinsey & Company where she addressed strategic and organizational challenges for several consumer goods and services clients. Gloria began her career in market research in the Paper Division of Procter & Gamble. During that time, she was responsible for designing, executing, and analyzing custom market research for several key Procter & Gamble brands including Pampers, Luvs, Charmin, Bounty and Puffs. Gloria graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Indiana University with a dual degree in telecommunications and business. She received her Master of Management from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Master of Divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary. She was ordained as a minister in the United Church of Christ in 2015.
Colleen Funkey
Executive Director, Consumer Insights,
The Estée Lauder Companies
Colleen Funkey began her career studying psychology at Rhodes University in South Africa. With a passion for people and understanding what drives them and why, she is curious, asks lots of questions and likes to learn something new every day. From marketing Colgate toothpaste in South Africa, to launching her own beauty care range ‘Imbali’, then unlocking insights to guide the marketing of Anheuser-Busch’s iconic beer brands and now in her role at the Estée Lauder Companies, Colleen seeks to understand the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ in order to design brand strategies and business solutions that connect in a relevant, credible and ownable way. Great brands are built when we make meaningful connections with people, that’s why the consumer is always at the center of everything we do #consumerobsessed.
Renata Policicio
SVP, Direct-to-Consumer Research,
WarnerMedia
Renata Policicio is Senior Vice President, Direct-to-Consumer Research, WarnerMedia, responsible for leading the research team’s efforts, which focus on brand and market strategies, growth and content marketing, customer satisfaction, product strategy and user experience, as well as understanding the changing entertainment landscape and identifying potential and emerging trends as the industry and consumers evolve. Consumer insights are at the forefront of Policicio and her team’s work, and they have reviewed feedback from almost 170,000 HBO Max subscribers to ensure all company initiatives and platform updates have the most significant, positive impact.
Policicio and her team play a key role in informing critical decision making and business priorities. In collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, she provides guidance on the appropriate measurement, reporting, data systems and capabilities to successfully navigate the industry. In addition to this, Policicio and her team work to develop new and innovative ways of displaying and distributing data in a format that is comprehensible across various channels of communication.
Prior to her career with WarnerMedia’s Direct-to-Consumer research team, Policicio gained more than 20 years of experience researching and analyzing consumer trends at Fortune 500 companies such as ESPN, Turner and Microsoft. While at ESPN, she led global research teams spanning from the United States to Latin America, Europe and Asia. She and her team were able to glean actionable research insights into local markets and their specific consumer behavior regarding online viewing habits and programming trends. These insights provided guidance to deepen the understanding of the sports landscape and drove growth in more than 30 countries.
Before her time with ESPN, Policicio served as a senior research director at Turner International in São Paulo, Brazil, her hometown. While in Brazil, she also worked for Microsoft and Fischer America. She is trilingual and holds an MBA in business and marketing as well as a bachelor’s degree in communications with specializations in consumer behavior and neuromarketing from Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing in Brazil.