BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The 2023 Women In Analytics Board of Directors is comprised of an esteemed group of ARF leaders. Together, they help build annual programs and a community.
Kelsey Barry
Global Insights Solutions Manager,
Samsung Ads’ Marketing & Analytics Group
Kelsey Barry is a global Insights Solutions Manager in Samsung Ads’ Marketing & Analytics group. Kelsey focuses her knowledge of the marketplace to research and develop meaningful insights on the changing TV ecosystem and works to streamline and automate Samsung’s data products for internal and external stakeholders alike.
Lucy Garate-Barros
Sr. Market Research Manager,
Brand, Advertising, and Research (BAR),
Microsoft Corporation
Lucy represents the voice of the customer in a company that is customer-obssessed.
She’s been conducting marketing research for over 15 years, gathering data-driven insights about our customer’s business needs, motivations, challenges, preferences, etc. Our Engineering and Marketing teams leverage those insights to create, deliver, and promote the best products and services for our customers.
In her current role, she leads Microsoft Surface campaign measurement and provides timely and deep insights to inform campaign strategy and optimization.
Lucy is also the former Chair of HOLA (Hispanic/Latinx Organization of Leaders in Action) and currently co-leads HOLA MCB (Latinos in Marketing). HOLA is the Hispanic/Latinx Employee Resource Group at Microsoft with over 3,000 members in the US. Under Lucy’s leadership HOLA is working on fulfilling its mission to create a community for Hispanic/Latinx employees and allies where everyone can be their authentic selves. She co-lead the strategy and execution of what it was Microsoft’s best Hispanic Heritage Month campaign to date. Lucy has been invited as a panelist at different events (internal and external to Microsoft) to talk about her experience as an ERG leader and as a Latina in the workplace.
Lucy has been with Microsoft since 2012. Prior to that, she worked 8 years for IBM in the Market Intelligence team as a Market Analyst, focusing on opportunity and compete analysis.
Lucy holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, a Master’s degree in Business Administration, and a Master’s degree in Market Research. She is originally from Peru; she is married to an amazing Spaniard, Jose Barros, and together they have two wonderful trilingual children: Sofia and Sebastian (who claim to be 1/3 Peruvian, 1/3 Spanish, and 1/3 Texan)
Maria Barva
Senior Director, National Research & Analytics,
iHeartMedia
Maria leads the Premiere Networks arm of iHeartMedia’s National Research and Analytics team. She is passionate about the uniquely personal connection of audio channels with listeners and has an expertise in nationally syndicated audio personalities, utilizing data to understand audience profiles and behaviors as well as identify audience alignment with brand messaging. Maria also has experience in ad effectiveness where she created the design, oversaw the implementation, and developed actionable insights from the research for key client campaigns. She is particularly excited to be a part of the research community at a time when media usage and data availability are in a pivotal stage of growth and evolution.
Neha Bhargava
Advertising Research Director,
Meta
Neha Bhargava leads the Advertising Research team at Meta. Before joining Meta, Neha was a strategy consultant focused on providing product and marketing decisions based on big data. She started her career as an Electrical Engineer and a Mechanical Engineer designing avionics control hardware for rockets. Neha holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.
Aarti Bhaskaran
Global Lead, Ad Research & Insights,
Snap Inc.
Aarti is a storyteller, strategic thinker and insights leader with over 15 years of experience in consumer insights. She currently leads the Global Ad Research & Insights team at Snap Inc.
In her role, she leads a team with a mission to educate the advertising industry and marketing community on new ad formats, audiences and platforms through data-driven insights and empirical evidence and be a voice of Snapchat at industry forums and conferences.
Aarti’s career has taken her across the globe. Prior to joining Snap, she was a client leader at Kantar managing a portfolio that included Microsoft, LinkedIn, Visa, TikTok and Snapchat. Before that, she built the Insights and Analytics practice at MediaCom Canada, where she launched Canada-specific solutions to measure media performance. She moved to Canada from Singapore where she was the Asia Pacific lead on brand performance and creative development research for PepsiCo and other global clients.
Latoya Christian
Managing Partner,
GroupM
LaToya Christian is a Managing Partner at GroupM in New York. As a conscious marketer, she infuses culture into the area of data analytics and strategy to tell rich, impactful brand and consumer stories. In her role she leads a team of marketers that spearhead special projects, build insights led marketing and media strategies and implement best in class measurement methods. She currently manages client relationships across multiple categories, including Tech, Retail and Entertainment. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Hampton University and a Master of Science Degree in Integrated Marketing from New York University with a specialization in Brand & Digital Marketing.
Shari Cleary
Head of Research & 3rd Party Measurement,
Google
Shari Cleary joined Google in 2020 and is the Head of Reach and 3rd Party Measurement. In this role, she partners with third-party measurement companies and builds solutions that assess brand impact of advertising on Google platforms.
Shari joined Google from BuzzFeed where she was the SVP of Research, Insights, and Brand Planning. In that role, she oversaw all advertising analytics and measurement for the company and helped brands create meaningful campaigns by engaging targeted audiences and driving real world action. She also spearheaded BuzzFeed’s data driven thought leadership research to identify industry and audience trends that pioneer the way marketers address business objectives. Prior to BuzzFeed, Shari served as SVP of Strategic Insights & Research for Comedy Central where she oversaw analytics and consumer insights across all platforms including digital and linear. She also held senior research roles at Adobe Omniture, CBS, Comscore, and launched her career at ACNielsen. Shari previously served as an Executive Board Member for the Digital Analytics Association, co-founded the Media Special Interest Group, and has spoken at numerous industry conferences worldwide.
Lauren Cosby
VP, Product Management
Circana
As a Product leader and champion, Lauren has spent nearly a decade creating and driving strategy for innovative products and solutions that leverage big data and advanced analytic techniques to generate actionable insights for both Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers and retailers. Prior to her work in Product Management, Lauren spent several years leading highly customized survey research engagements, addressing critical business issues for a wide range of clients and CPG categories.
A highly collaborative Product leader, Lauren has a track record of building strong and enduring partnerships and teams. With her belief in the benefits of diverse teams, she has long been an advocate and sponsor of programs aimed at improving workplace equity and inclusion.
Colleen Funkey
VP, 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.
Patricia Gregory
VP, Analytics
Kantar
Patty brings 20+ years of experience partnering with clients to help embed data and analytics into decision-making. In her role at Kantar, she is an analytics partner to a portfolio of strategic clients across industry verticals including CPG, Banking, and Technology, helping them leverage analytics to address business needs.
Prior to joining Kantar, she led global client analytic relationships with Nielsen’s platinum CPG clients. In this role she partnered with clients in the areas of data strategy and democratization, protocols for measurement, best in class management tools and reporting, and enterprise-wide analytics.
Patty has a particular passion for marketing effectiveness measurement, having spent several years at various firms consulting and leading client engagements. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Yale.
Abigail Hollister
Principal,
Formative Insights
Abby Hollister is Principal at Formative Insights, a research and marketing consultancy. Abby focuses on research innovations and company partnerships that build best in class solutions for client partners. Abby’s expertise includes emotional measurement, research design, client relationship management, and consulting. Abby works with partners on marketing strategy and tactical execution of branded communications across industries. Prior to creating Formative Insights, she led Ameritest, a research-based Brand Communications consultancy, as President where she spent 15 years honing her expertise in advertising and creative strategy & development.
Prior to Ameritest, Abby worked in Client Service at Kantar Millward Brown and in custom research for Catalina Marketing Research Solutions. Abby is a graduate of the University of New Mexico with a degree in Marketing Management and holds her Master of Arts in Integrated Marketing Communications from St Bonaventure University.
Divya Kaur
VP, Marketing Science
Kinesso
Divya has 16+ years Analytics leadership experience with the top marketing research & media firms (Nielsen, MediaCom WPP, Kinesso IPG), working to improve business outcomes for innovative and game changing brands, such as P&G, Unilever, L’Oreal, Uber, GoodRx, Impossible Foods, USPS, and many more. She has deep passion and expertise in utilizing advanced analytics to create cross platform measurement connectivity, enabling holistic insights and data forward strategies.
Currently, Divya is the Connected Measurement & Analytics lead, at IPG Kinesso, responsible for end-to-end client engagement and analytics product enhancements/ innovation. She also serves as a member on Measurement Council and Board Member for Women in Analytics, at Advertising Research Foundation.
A purpose driven analytics professional, Divya takes pride in creating and supporting progressive workplace culture to enhance employee wellness and team productivity.
Siani Kiyonaga
Product Strategy, Senior Manager
Toyota Financial Services
Siani Kiyonaga is the Product Strategy, Senior Manager for Toyota Financial Services.
In this role, Ms. Kiyonaga has the responsibility to lead North America Toyota to enhance the value gleaned from the used car marketplace and supporting processes.
Previously, Ms. Kiyonaga managed a group within corporate strategy focused on providing Toyota Financial Services research-based actionable insights to develop innovative solutions, delivering customer value and business growth.
Prior, Kiyonaga oversaw marketing efforts for the Toyota vehicle brand as the Toyota Brand, Growth Audiences and Cross Vehicle Line Marketing, Senior Manager for Toyota Motor North America. In that capacity she headed a team to develop strategies and campaigns to enhance the Toyota vehicle brand, capture growth audiences including multicultural and identity-based segments and highlight the brand’s technology and safety product portfolio.
Earlier on, Kiyonaga was the Strategy and Business Planning Senior Manager for Connected Vehicle Technologies, a division of Toyota Motor North America. There, she was responsible for the strategic planning of Toyota and Lexus multimedia systems, including financial planning, volume forecasting, and brokering new business partnerships.
During her tenure at Toyota, Ms. Kiyonaga has held several additional positions in the areas of Business Development, Product Planning and Pricing.
Before Toyota, Kiyonaga worked at Sony Pictures Entertainment, in the International Licensing, Internet Marketing Strategy and Market Research Departments.
She earned a bachelor’s degree from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, a certificate in Sustainable Investing from Harvard Business School Online and an M.B.A. from the University of California Los Angeles Anderson School of Management.
Heidi Miller
SVP of Analytics/Campaign Insights
Mediahub Global
Heidi leads the analytics practice for Mediahub’s New York and Winston-Salem offices. She has spent over 20 years in the advertising and marketing analytics space observing behavior through data. She has worked for both media and creative agencies, as well as client-side companies. She believes that successful and impactful advertising can only be achieved when there is a solid union of creative message, audience, and media placement.
Vita Molis
Head of Research & Insights, Global Functions & NA
TikTok
Vita Molis has 10+ years of market research experience and is the Head of Research & Insights for Global Functions and North America at TikTok. Focusing on both audience and product research.
Over the course of her career, Vita has designed research programs to help global brands make informed business decisions and shape marketing strategy. She has a diverse background in qualitative and quantitative research with a focus on thought leadership and advanced statistical analysis across a variety of industries: CPG, Beauty, Retail, eComm, Tech and Finance.
Prior to TikTok, Vita worked at both boutique and large-scale research firms. Most recently, she led the Nielsen Music research practice where she worked with brands and labels on audience insight and brand sponsorship.
Neelima Panuganti
Growth Insights & Analytics Leader
General Mills
Neelima Panuganti is a Applied Analytics & Consumer Insights Leader, at General Mills. In her current role, she is responsible for Leading Category Growth Analytics & Media Measurement for the Morning Foods Operating Unit, North America. Neelima & her team play a key role in informing Business Leaders on Key Growth Opportunities, Helping translate them into Key Strategies and using various Analytical Tools and Measurement methods closing the loop on what’s working and not working for the business.
She has spent over 16+ years in the CPG space understanding Consumer Behavior, connecting it with Marketplace Realities to drive Category & Brand Growth with Data & Analytics at the forefront. She has expertise in both Building & Scaling new capabilities as well as applying those capabilities for Identifying Growth Opportunities. Prior to General Mills & CPG, Neelima worked at GE and Honeywell, as an Advanced Analytics Expert in R&D. She has an MBA from Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota and a MS in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Renata Policicio
SVP, Research, Direct to Consumer and Streaming
Warner Bros. Discovery
Renata Policicio is Senior Vice President, Direct-to-Consumer Research, Warner Bros. Discovery, 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 Warner Bros. Discovery’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.
Audrey Rusch
VP, Activation Development,
Oracle Advertising
Audrey is a VP of Activation Development at Oracle Advertising, where she is responsible for delivering intelligent activation data products that allow for advanced decisioning around whom to target in addition to when, where and why to target them. Drawing from years of adtech experience, Audrey’s expertise is in building scaled and robust systems that bring data to life through data science. She is passionate about making data science approachable and accessible through simple and streamlined design and systems that support continual experimentation and insights for those in the world of advertising.
She has worked in digital marketing data science since 2012. Audrey has experience in constructing data science products for audience, measurement, optimization, and identity. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in integrated science and mathematics from Northwestern University and a Masters of Arts in statistics from Harvard University.
Divya Singla
VP, Decision Sciences,
UM Worldwide
Divya Singla brings 13 years of experience in business analytics with focus on formulating sustainable data solutions for Fortune 500 clients. In her current role as VP-Decision Sciences at UM Worldwide, she spearheads data strategy discussions to deliver impactful insights and help her clients realize their goals against overall brand marketing initiatives globally. Previously, she has served as the Analytics and Client Strategy lead at Centerfield Media, where she played a pivotal role optimizing growth by building performance analytics and account management infrastructures from the ground up for its Business Development arm.
Her thorough knowledge, and passion for streamlining processes, cultivating high-performing teams, and ensuring that right data is analyzed for continued overall growth of the company has helped her achieve success, while optimizing growth for both internal and external stakeholders.
Divya earned an MBA from The College of William and Mary (Analytics, and Brand Management); and Masters in English Literature from University of Delhi (India).
Marta Williams
Brand Insights & Analytics Director,
Strategic Insights Group, UnitedHealth Group
Marta leads brand insights and analytics across the UnitedHealthcare brand and businesses. In her 4 years focused on UnitedHealthcare – she’s delivered insights to guide brand strategy, inspire impactful advertising and measure campaign performance across a modern media mix. Prior to joining UnitedHealthcare in 2016, Marta worked at 3M for 6 years conducting a wide array of B2B and B2C global research across a variety of products and brands including Post-it®, Thinsulate, Scotch, ScotchBrite, Command, Nexcare and Filtrete. Marta has a BA in Psychology and MA in Counseling Psychology from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Marta enjoys family time with her husband, young son and dog; likes to explore new restaurants in the Twin Cities and aspires to see every Best Picture Nominee each year prior to the Oscars airing.
Lindsey Woodland, Ph.D.
Group Vice President, Client Data Science,
605
Dr. Lindsey Woodland brings to over a decade of data science experience and extensive work on both the theoretical and practical fronts of client-based data science. Her work has included: developing cross-platform attribution methodologies, creating an optimized persuadable targeting solution and leading solutions for some of the biggest brands and media companies. At 605, Lindsey leads the development and application of analytical methods and products that push the boundaries of TV measurement by helping clients advance their insights and drive success. She has played an instrumental role in the development, execution and success of various large scale data science solutions, and was the lead developer of 605 IMP4CT, the company’s always-on ad campaign attribution solution. She earned her PhD and an MA in Mathematics from the University of Missouri – Columbia and a BA from Westminster College.
Rachael Feigenbaum
SVP, Events,
Advertising Research Foundation
ARF Women in Analytics Lead
Rachael Feigenbaum joined the ARF in 2010 and is the Senior Vice President of Events. She is responsible for program content and attendee experiences. This includes conceptualizing and executing in-person and virtual programming, building and managing judging committees and activating board involvement in events. She also spearheads the ARF Women in Analytics Group, which hosts events and community-building initiatives throughout the year. Prior to the ARF, Rachael led a portfolio of events at the DMA and before that at Forbes Conferences. She holds a B.A. in English and Russian Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an M.A. in International Relations from Columbia University.
Kristin Ace
Director of New Business and Membership,
Advertising Research Foundation
ARF Women in Analytics Lead
Kristin is the Director of New Business and Membership at the ARF where she focuses on member engagement and retention, as well as sponsorships and new business development. Kristin also leads ARF Women in Analytics, a community whose mission is to advance gender equality through promoting female leadership, providing mentorship opportunities and hosting events.