The best conversations at a research conference don’t happen on stage. They happen in the hallways, right after a session, when someone’s still thinking out loud. Waves of Thinking is our attempt to capture that—short, unfiltered interviews with the researchers and strategists shaping the future of consumer insights, recorded live from the floor at IIEX North America 2026. Here’s everything from our time there.
Kicking off Waves of Thinking — Elana Marmorstein, aytm
aytm’s Elana Marmorstein introduces Waves of Thinking live from the floor at IIEX North America 2026. This short-form series captures unfiltered conversations with the researchers, strategists, and insights leaders shaping the future of consumer intelligence. No slides, no polish—just sharp perspectives from the people doing the work.
Michelle Finzel — DAP
Michelle Finzel, Senior Manager of Consumer Insights at DAP, sat down with us at IIEX North America 2026 to make a case that might feel counterintuitive: the best defense against fraudulent data isn’t smarter algorithms, it’s returning to human connection. Her sharpest point—that the math on fraud is wrong—reframes the conversation. When clients push to save credits, the real cost of what gets through (bad data shaping real decisions)rarely makes it into that calculation.
Char-lynn Griffiths — Faire
Char-lynn Griffiths, Staff Market Researcher at Faire, joined us at IIEX North America 2026 to unpack a five-country study on B2B decision-making. The finding: values and emotion aren’t noise, they’re signal.The harder question is what you do with that insight when you still need segmentation teams can actually use. Her framing—that richness and scalability aren’t opposites, but getting them to coexist requires being deliberate about which decisions each type of insight is meant to drive—reframes a debate that usually flattens too quickly.
Greg Silverman — Interbrand
Greg Silverman, Global Director of Brand Economics at Interbrand, sat down with us at IIEX North America 2026 to dig into what’s happening with brand influence. It’s declining—but not everywhere, and the exceptions aren’t random. He walks through what the outlier categories have in common, and what brands in declining categories can realistically take from that. His other thread is just as sharp: knowing what the data says and getting marketers to act on it are two completely different problems, and the translation layer between insight and action is where a lot of good brand thinking quietly disappears.
Andrew Embry — Eli Lilly and Company
Andrew Embry, Sr. Director of Insights Innovation and Capabilities at Eli Lilly and Company, joined us at IIEX North America 2026 to talk about what it actually looked like to bring an insights team through AI skepticism and out the other side. The cultural turn was one thing. The organizational one was another. His read on the leadership piece: it wasn’t just that AI made the work faster— it changed how executives understood what the insights function was capable of, and that reframing mattered more than any individual deliverable.
Carissa Luch, PhD — Sargento
Carissa Luch, PhD, Director of Consumer Research at Sargento, sat down with us at IIEX North America 2026 to talk about where insights actually get stuck in complex organizations, and what it takes to move them. Spoiler: it’s mostly a people problem, and that framing changes what solutions are even worth pursuing. Her take on Gen AI fits right into that—she describes it as an amplifier, not a replacement, and notes that the places where human judgment still matters most are exactly the places where organizational dynamics are hardest to navigate.
Maxalan Vickers — Overtime
Maxalan Vickers, Senior Insights Manager at Overtime, joined us at IIEX North America 2026 to make the case that convenience is actually an act of empathy— and that reframe changes a lot of downstream thinking about what you build and why. He walks through how Overtime takes Gen Z’s demand for authenticity seriously rather than just gestures at it. One concrete answer: they respond to every message and DM they receive. Every one.That’s a philosophy made visible, and once a fanbase notices, it becomes load-bearing for how the brand is perceived.
David Iudica — Uber
David Iudica, Head of Global Measurement & Insights Analytics at Uber Advertising, sat down with us at IIEX North America 2026 to talk about what happens when you stop thinking about a delivery platform as a transaction channel and start thinking about it as a full-funnel influencer. That reframe has real implications for how Uber Eats understands its role in the consumer relationship. The methodology that got them there is worth noting too: pairing mobile ethnographies with large-scale quant, where the ethnography surfaced things the quantitative data had no way of seeing.
Mallory Krumsieg — International Justice Mission
Mallory Krumsieg, Global Marketing Director at International Justice Mission, joined us at IIEX North America 2026 to talk about donor motivation research that genuinely shifted how she understood the people giving to the cause. The insight itself was one thing—what they did with it was another. Her account of what made cross-functional adoption work across marketing, product, program, and field teams (and what would have derailed it) is the part that’s most transferable to anyone trying to close the gap between insight and action.
Angela Smith, MBA/MSMR — Talking Rain Beverage Co®, makers of Sparkling Ice
Angela Smith, MBA/MSMR, Director of Consumer & Market Insights at Talking Rain Beverage Co®, makers of Sparkling Ice, sat down with us at IIEX North America 2026 to talk about what her team uncovered about how consumers are relating to the RTD beverage category, and the methodological choices that made those findings possible. Running ethnographies and quantitative concept evaluation in the same program is ambitious; designing them so they genuinely inform each other rather than just coexist is harder than it sounds. Her most surprising behavioral finding is the kind of thing that only surfaces when you give people enough room to show you how they actually live with a product— not just how they talk about it.
Until next time
Nine conversations. One conference. A lot to think about. aytm’s Waves of Thinking series wrapped up at IIEX North America2026 with perspectives from researchers, strategists, and insights leaders across some of the most recognizable brands in the world. We’re leaving inspired—and already looking ahead to the next event. Catch up on every episode and stay tuned for what’s next.
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