Ed Keller is Executive Director of MRII (Market Research Institute International), a nonprofit that provides global education and training resources on best practices in market research, insights and analytics.

A recognized authority in consumer insights, word of mouth, and influencer marketing, Ed has led top insights agencies and founded a social analytics firm. He is in both the Market Research and Word of Mouth Marketing Halls of Fame and was honored as an inaugural Insights Legend by ESOMAR and Insight250.

Niels is a visionary leader at the forefront of transforming the insights industry. With 15+ years in global leadership roles at Walmart, Kantar, and GfK, he’s built high-performing teams and scaled cutting-edge research solutions across the globe. Currently Managing Director at Human8, he helps the world’s most ambitious brands turn deep human understanding into powerful business action.

Niels holds a PhD from the European Business School for his work on brand communication and is the author of MRII’s upcoming course “Evolving Methods in Market Research”, bringing academic rigor and future-ready thinking to the next generation of insights professionals.

Rita is a highly motivated and accomplished global business leader with over 25 years of record-setting performance in the SaaS industry. At Salesforce, she was among the first to serve as a Named Account Executive, Account Manager, and Customer Success Manager, working closely with enterprise customers.

As Salesforce rapidly expanded its Commercial business, Rita leveraged her expertise to transition enterprise strategies into this segment through innovative, data-driven digital initiatives. She also built the company’s inaugural Success & Sales Alignment Programs, forging strong cross-organizational partnerships and significantly enhancing the customer experience. 

After 18 years at Salesforce, she joined Elasticsearch (pre-IPO) to establish the Customer Success and Renewals organization. She focused on driving value within the DevOps Customer Persona through capabilities like Search, ML, and Observability.  Before starting her consulting business, she spent her last stint at Collibra, where she built a strong alignment with Sales, Marketing, Product & Engineering. In this role, she learned the importance of data governance across the enterprise. 

The accumulation of Rita’s combined learnings on CRM, AI, ML, and Data, and her experience as an investor in AI hardware drives her curiosity about how AI will transform how customer-facing teams will work. Rita is known by her peers for her client-focused approach, relationship acumen, and ability to build diverse, high-performing teams; Rita continues to set the standard for excellence in customer experience.

With over 20 years of experience in Customer Experience, Raj has been both a practitioner and consultant. He is currently Group Manager – Voice of Customer Programs at Intuit.

Prior to Intuit, Raj led the CX Consulting division at QuestionPro, helping organizations design and execute customer experience and journey mapping strategies. Before that, he directed the Voice of Customer team at Airbnb, innovating strategies to capture and socialize customer feedback, while also advising the NPSx team at Bain & Company on leveraging new technologies to enhance customer sentiment prediction.

His earlier roles at Verint and eBay involved optimizing Voice of Customer programs and delivering actionable insights. Raj is a sought-after speaker on CX topics and has presented at numerous global CX conferences. He also teaches CX Measurement at Michigan State University.

Ian established ikona Analytics after spending over 25 years in human capital consulting and corporate HR executive roles leading People Analytics teams at some of the most iconic companies in the world including Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Google, and American Express.

Ian holds a Bachelors in Psychology from the University of Virginia, a Masters in Data Science from Northwestern University, and has studied Generative AI and LLM product development in affiliation with Stanford University. He is a frequent speaker on topics of HR Digital Transformation and AI, a top 20 People Analytics Influencer, an Adjunct Professor of HR Analytics at New York University, an advisor to workforce tech startups through SemperVirens Venture Capital, and a contributor to numerous books on People Analytics.

Bennet is a seasoned applied-AI engineer with extensive experience in scaling machine-learning products across global workforces. He has previously worked at top-tier companies like Expedia Group, Amazon, and Merck, where he led teams in translating complex HR data into actionable insights.

With a strong focus on developing scalable technologies, Bennet has reduced time-to-decision from months to mere minutes. At Ikona Analytics, he leads platform engineering, AI development, and data science, driving innovation in HR systems to enhance agility and performance across organizations.

Ikona Analytics will be bringing their new Chief Product Officer to our workshop, an emerging leader in AI-driven HR technologies. This is your chance to meet a key player who is shaping the next generation of employee experience solutions.