Meet the Team

Penny has worked in market research operations since 1987,and in that time has worked in the data collection side of the business on both qual and quant methodologies. She is a Fellow of the MRS, Chair of IQCS and also serves on the Market Research Forum, MRQSA Council and the MRS Company Partner Advisory Board. In the past Penny has served on the AQR Committee as Field Representative, the MRS Accredited Interviewer Training scheme and the Respondent Interviewer Interface committee.

Chris has worked in market research operations for over 30 years, having begun his career in 1985 with one of the early UK telephone research agencies, Audience Selection, (part of AGB). He went on to head up telephone operations at TNS, IntelliQuest Inc., Millward Brown and Harris Interactive before joining Kudos Research as Managing Director in 2006.

Chris has always been a staunch supporter of benchmark quality standards and over the years has invested a great deal of time and energy to help develop data-collection quality and training standards throughout the research industry.

Chris became a Full Member of the Market Research Society in 1995, was voted onto the Council of the Interviewer Quality Control Scheme in 1998 and became and ESOMAR Member in 1999.

During his time on IQCS council, Chris has worked with Chairman Penny Steele and Council members to ensure the Standards were continually reviewed to reflect current working practices and methodologies.

Chris has worked closely with the MRS on a number of taskforces from early 2000s including the Respondent Interviewer Interface Committee. Through his involvement and input Chris helped to promote and raise industry-wide standards in data collection and interviewer training and developed the materials for the MRS benchmark Accredited Interviewer Training Scheme.
In 2002 Chris became Vice Chairman of the IQCS and a member of the inspection panel and in 2016 was awarded an MRS Fellowship in recognition of his contribution to industry quality standards, and is also a judge on the MRS Operations Awards panel.

Gill Wareing has been the IQCS Administrator for a number of years. Previously, she was Secretary/Treasurer of the Market Research Benevolent Association. This role began when she was with the Market Research Society where she held the position of Assistant Secretary-General and continued when she left the Society. At the MRS Gill was involved with the organisation of the annual conference, lunches, evening meetings and tasks related to MRS Council and Professional Standards Committee.

She is also Secretary/Treasurer of the Research Network, the association for current and former researchers, which facilitates social and networking opportunities through regular lunches and events. Her other current industry involvement is as Administrator of the Association of Market & Social Research (AMSR) which is devoted to the preservation of historic market research material.

Jackie is the Regional Quality Assurance Director for GfK NCE – providing guidance on compliance, legislation, industry guidelines and standards affecting market research, both in the UK and internationally.

Jackie is the appointed Data Protection Officer for GfK UK and is a member of the GfK Supervisory Board and also:

• Full Member of the MRS
• An IQCS Council Member
• Member of the UK BSI (SVS/3) Technical committee for the review of ISO 20252 standard
• MRS Market Research Quality Standards Advisory Board member (MRQSAB)

Jackie has overall responsibility for the GfK UK Research & Quality Department which oversees the implementation of ISO 9001 and ISO 20252 standards within GfK. Her wider responsibilities means assumes the role of Quality Assurance Director for GfK Northern, Central and Eastern Europe (NCE). Jackie regularly contributes to standards review changes in industry guidelines for the MRS and ESOMAR

Volker has worked in market research since 1999 in the UK and in Germany. During this time he has always been heavily involved in the data collection process both interviewers driven and online. In his career in research he was responsible for operations, as well as industry standard counselling, and spearheading QC through all departments. Volker is a certified MRS member, a council member of the IQCS and serving on the Strategy sub-committee that is responsible for the development and update of the IQCS Website. Volker is also a member of the BHBIA awards committee.

Having started as an interviewer back in the early 90’s, Dan worked his way up through roles in F2F, CATI and Online fieldwork management by way of a diverse range of MR fieldwork and full service providers. Starting at IFF Research, then the Wire, Morris Hargreaves McIntyre, RealityMine and now B2B International he is responsible for designing and implementing growth and development strategies in data collection.

Over the years, Dan has gained experience managing teams across a broad spectrum of methodologies including very large scale international CATI projects, 24h turnaround national in-venue surveys with cinema viewers, very hard to reach B2B recruitment for online qual, and cutting edge passive behavioural data collection.

Dan is a full member of the MRS and an IQCS Council Member. He has been an advocate of the IQCS standards for many years and has experience of working in a number of IQCS and ISO20252 compliant companies.

He is a huge advocate of technological innovation, integration, collaboration and creative problem solving. You are just as likely to see him at trade shows, looking for the latest exciting solution, as you are to find him at a music festival or running (slowly) around the tracks and trails of the Peak District where he lives.

Xavier Fonder has been in the research industry since 2013 and is Delivery & Compliance Director for RONIN International, taking overall responsibility for compliance, policy and process development as well as robust service delivery to time, budget and cost – internally and externally. Having had a range of roles across fieldwork capabilities, experienced in CATI and Web methodologies, he looks after pragmatic ways to use best practice for good business and how to make this a pre-sales and post-sales value adding tool, rather than an obstacle.

The remit is focused on designing policy and implementing strategy to support individuals at every step of the research process, building confidence in all teams to take the right decisions for improved outcomes and ongoing knowledge-sharing, and supporting client-facing staff in suggesting commercially-viable solutions to compliance challenges.

In addition to his seat on the IQCS Council, Xavier is BHBIA Fieldwork Forum Chair and a member of the BHBIA Ethics & Compliance Committee on the Training Team.

Looking back I seem to have spent most of my working life in market research with forays into teaching, careers guidance, elderly care management and inspection of residential care homes in between. My first MR experience was as a student in Bristol in 1970 interviewing bus passengers on whether smokers should sit only at the back of the bus. (How times have changed on that one!) My next exposure was from 1978 when, with a baby and no job, I had a thorough interviewer training with Public Attitude Surveys for whom I interviewed for 7 years, during which time I first encountered IQCS via accompaniment and backcheck reports.

In 1993 I returned to the business as Field Manager for Marketing Sciences in Winchester, and there I stayed for more than 16 years until I retired in 2010, managing both face-to-face and telephone research. What a great job being a Field Manager is! Juggling all the balls, being asked for, and asking, the impossible and getting it, and having conversations with thousands of interesting people. The best part is the interviewers, as there would have been no job without them.

The very difficult side of a Field Manager’s job is maintaining quality standards of data collection, especially with a dispersed workforce. It requires endless vigilance, careful record keeping, a recognition of its importance by the field and supervisory teams, and an acceptance of its role, and cost, by the company. I wholeheartedly believe that for market research to have credibility each company must police itself thoroughly and continuously, setting and adhering to data collection standards in order to remain above reproach. Being inspected annually ensures that this does not slip to second place, and in my view the IQCS inspection is by far the most rigorous and satisfactory. I am delighted to be part of the IQCS inspectorate, making a continuing contribution to the maintenance of standards in market research.

Away from IQCS, I’ve recently moved to a brand new house and have developed my brickwork and path-laying skills to landscape the large garden! I love to grow plants (I’m a plantaholic, can’t go past a few plants without buying at least one, to my husband’s despair), walk, cycle and have holidays – don’t we all! – and I spend a bit, but not too much, of my time with my 4 grandchildren! Life is busy, and good!

Rachael has been an AQR board member since June 2018 and is the AQRs representative at IQCS.

Rachael has worked in qualitative market research recruitment since 2007 and is a Director at Criteria Fieldwork.
At Criteria, Rachael is responsible for project and account management and also managing a project team.
Rachael is experienced at working on projects across a range of sectors including consumer, business and social research.
She frequently manages studies involving group, depth, user testing and other online or app methodologies.

At AQR Rachael is passionate about representing the fieldwork side of qual, she regularly attends and helps organise AQR events.
Rachael is also involved in the continued development of RAS - the Recruiter Accreditation Scheme. The MRS and AQR training scheme is designed recognise the knowledge, skills and competence of professional recruiters.

I first became aware of Market Research and what it was as a teenager, when my mum first started as a part time interviewer for RSGB. Growing up in a house where interviewers would ring in their daily figures, from 8am – 10pm and having to help on the additional phone line we had to have installed, proved there really was going to be no getting away from it. After having my children, I was looking to work part time and was offered the opportunity to work for RSGB helping with interviewer admin. Whilst working there I was asked by a colleague if I would be interested in helping ‘just for a few days’ at another Market Research company, MORI Field and Tab. That was in February 1996, now, 26 years and several mergers later, I work for Ipsos as the F2F Field Support Team Manager. This currently covers the F2F Field validation process and includes the Field Administration team. I am a member of Ipsos’s internal BES team and also an internal auditor.

Melanie Newall has worked in market research, business intelligence and statistical analysis since 1995, both in the UK and New Zealand. Areas of research include, demography, institutional research, politics, education, and transport, with extensive experience in delivering face-to-face, observational, and on-line surveys through the stages of survey design, data collection sampling strategies and electronic data capture techniques including handheld devices, online surveying, and video surveys. She holds a postgraduate certificate in Research and Analysis and a Master of Science.

At Transport for Greater Manchester, who are responsible for 5 million journeys per day across the region, Melanie co-manages the Survey Research and Analysis Department (SRAD), consisting of both field-based interviewers and planning and analysis staff. The department delivers a wide variety of transport related operational, monitoring, and customer focused surveys for internal and external clients. Melanie has a keen interest in ensuring that the SRAD interviewers maintain high quality interview standards, ensuring that reliable data is captured, analysed, and delivered to clients.

Currently the Quality Lead in Data Collection for Verian, Louise started her career in research over 26 years ago in Australia before returning to the UK and joining Millward Brown / TNS / Verian (fka Kantar).
She has held every role within the call centre as well as other positions within Data Collection Operations but has always specialised in guidance, support, and training for the interviewing panel. Her expertise is around participant queries, helplines, complaints, quality, information security, data protection, UK GDPR and MRS & ISO compliance.
Quality has been at the core of Louise’s whole career leading her to join the IQCS Council in 2022.

Henri has worked in Market Research since 2004 and is Client Services Director at Perspective Research Services, part of the BVA BDRC Group. He leads the leads the Face-to-Face, Mixed Mode (Quant, Qual and Online) and International Project Management teams at PRS.
His remit includes overseeing project delivery and compliance with quality standards to ensure operational excellence and high quality deliverables. He helped to develop a strong team ethos in the Face-to-Face team delivering in the process outstanding results on a key nationwide tracker and consistent response rates that helped the project win the inaugural MRS Best Data Collection Award.

Having started in the Research Industry as an IQCS trained Interviewer, Henri is passionate about implementing best practices and quality control measures as well as helping team members to develop by fostering a culture of growth, accountability, and collaboration.
In addition to seating on the IQCS council, Henri is also an MRS full member and accredited to the MRS and AQR RAS.