Meet Our Moderator Team

He led the qualitative research practice at three major U.S. research firms before joining Decision Analyst in 2015. As the head of qualitative research at Decision Analyst, Clay is responsible for identifying new, innovative qualitative research platforms and tools, recruiting and training the very best moderators, and maintaining Decision Analyst’s network of strategic qualitative partners.

Clay emphasizes nondirective interviewing techniques, and he employs an array of projective techniques in his qualitative work. Clay is great at building trust and rapport with respondents so that they feel safe and secure in opening up to him. Clay is trained in the classical qualitative techniques (in-person focus groups and depths). He is a leader in using various online platforms (bulletin boards, online chat groups, webcams, large-scale qualitative, etc.), and he utilizes these techniques to enhance the qualitative learning.

Much of Clay’s work involves understanding the rational and emotional perceptions and connections through a process called “laddering.” Clay has conducted and led over 200 laddering related studies around the world. He has trained over 300 interviewers and analysts globally in the laddering/values research methodology.

Clay focuses on the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia, where his Southern U.S. English can be partially understood.

Clay works across many industries and categories, but he tends to focus on five main categories: consumer packaged goods, including foods and beverages; consumer services; food service and restaurants; B2B; and durable goods.

Clay really enjoys branding and positioning work, innovation and new product development, and strategy development and optimization.

Clay is a hobby sailor, a chicken rancher, and a vegetable gardener. He’s also an avid fly fisherman.

His primary responsibilities include designing, managing, moderating, analyzing, reporting, and presenting key insights and recommendations to help guide strategic business and brand decisions.

Roger is able to quickly recognize and dig into meaningful insights by combining his qualitative expertise with a strong marketing background. Since joining Decision Analyst, Roger has moderated hundreds of in-person and online interviews for qualitative and innovation projects. He has helped develop and pioneer research techniques, and has a wide range of experiences conducting traditional and emerging approaches, such as lead-user research, website heuristics, product usability, new product/service concept/ad development, ethnography, portrait/persona development, and shopper experience.

Roger's primary focus is on research conducted in the U.S.

Roger has experiences in industries such as CPG (including spirits, beverages, and foods), healthcare/medical, technology, home products and services (including home automation), automotive, telecommunications, consumer electronics, and retail.

She has deep experience in industries such as consumer packaged goods, apparel, retail and B2B, and has special expertise in the youth & family segment. Gretchen also brings with her a strong background in advertising as she has held senior account management roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, Euro RSCG and Publicis & Hal Riney.

She has deep experience in industries such as consumer packaged goods, apparel, retail and B2B, and has special expertise in the youth & family segment.

Gretchen is highly skilled in moderating traditional and digital qualitative methods including focus groups, webcam IDIs, shop-alongs, usability, digital discussion boards and ethnography.

Pamela has worked with hospital systems, integrated delivery networks, and accountable health organizations, universities, and schools.

She has completed multiple projects with third-party payers/health insurance organizations to probe the bases upon which they build formularies, determine the probable access that will be afforded to new products, and understand how they construct a value algorithm.

Clients look to Pamela for complete ownership of their research project—from early-stage planning, to moderating, to reporting on the key qualitative findings and recommendations. She specializes in uncovering and describing the behavioral, cognitive, and psychological factors that determine the customer journey and that influence decision-making.

Dr. Waite uses a conversational style to conduct in-person and virtual one-on-one interviews and focus groups. She uses a consultative approach when reporting what she heard, making realistic recommendations based on the client’s business objectives.

Pamela received her master’s and doctoral degrees in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from Harvard University where, in her capacity as head fellow for psychology, she won awards for her teaching. She also earned an MBA, with a concentration in organizational behavior and marketing management, from Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim Business School.

Prior to joining Decision Analyst, Pamela was a principal in two qualitative research/consulting firms. Before attending Harvard University, she held positions in national marketing and sales for CBS and its affiliates.

In her spare time, Pamela enjoys her garden, reading mysteries, stand-up comedy, good wine, having her New England buddies visit, and entertaining her local friends–and mixing as many of those at one time as is possible. She wishes she spoke a language other than English. Pamela is also currently writing a novel.

Combining a statistical background along with over 30 years of consumer insights experience, she works with her teams to create unique solutions to improve strategy for global brands. Most often they are improving strategies in areas of marketing, branding, communication, advertising, packaging, innovation, new product development, and customer experience. She also utilizes her understanding of each client and their industry to match the client with the right Client Service team. The hiring, training, and mentoring of researchers and executives is a key part of her role, as she manages a significant portion of the Client Service staff.

Bonnie’s informal style is the result of her upbringing. She’s from a small town where everyone knows and talks to each other, and that’s where she learned the old-fashioned art of conversation—a useful skill for a moderator. She enjoys meeting people, getting to know them, and learning what makes them tick. She especially likes methodologies that ask respondents to include video and images from their lives, homes, or shopping experiences; they provide a great starting point for a discussion.

She believes that a quantitative background and qualitative experience are opposite sides of the same coin. Her experience with analyzing quantitative data helps her find deeper meaning in the emotions respondents share in qualitative settings. She brings her understanding of those emotions into the questionnaires she develops for the quantitative phase of a project.

Bonnie has conducted in-person and webcam depth interviews, as well as in-store ethnography and in-home ethnography. She has also conducted various types and sizes of in-person focus groups, dyads and triads. These included interviewing young children who were seated on the floor. She also moderated some focus groups among married couples about purchasing and using outdoor grills—which devolved into sessions much like marriage counseling.

Bonnie focuses primarily research in North America, although she has also conducted interviews with English speakers in other parts of the world. She has also worked with local moderators and translators on qualitative research and ethnography in the Caribbean, the European Union, and Asia.

Bonnie’s moderating experience has been in consumer packaged goods and fast-moving consumer goods, retail, cosmetics/health & beauty, durable goods, health care, hospitality, and automotive.

Bonnie feels that innovation and new product development can be incredibly exciting. However, global expansion, product line extensions, and improved customer experience can improve return on investment significantly. She believes that’s the most exciting time to work with a client—when they come to you and say this is really difficult and we have tried to fix this problem for a while. If we can explore the customer journey and emotional engagement, then suggest the correct modifications to the business plan, we can help our clients transform their business. That is so exciting!

Bonnie and her better half have four children: a new public-relations associate in NYC, one in college studying economics, another in college studying business, and the youngest who is engineering-/physics-minded and finishing high school. They support their local symphony, go hiking, love their Maltese-Yorkie dog, and are avid travelers.

She has spent her career helping organizations better understand their customers and put those insights to work to drive growth for their businesses. As a partner in the firm and a co-leader of the company’s Client Service organization, Felicia shares responsibility for Decision Analyst’s growth and success; she accomplishes both through internal team leadership and development, as well as account guidance and strategy development. Felicia is energized by the time she spends conducting customer interviews and analyzing those conversations and discussions to help her clients drive meaningful changes for their brands.

Felicia utilizes a nondirective approach, gently guiding discussions. She is careful to avoid contributing ideas that would bias a participant’s responses. She believes strongly in the importance of being relatable and quickly establishing rapport. This puts respondents at ease and encourages them to honestly share their thoughts and feelings. She is a keen observer of body language and incorporates a variety of projective techniques into her work. These skills enable her to uncover feelings and emotions that are difficult or impossible for research participants to articulate or share explicitly. Especially in conducting business-to-business (B2B) research, Felicia acknowledges the importance of setting participants up as the experts. This help when asking very specific questions and facilitates her ability to draw out details through respondents’ explanations of often very technical topics.

Felicia focuses primarily on U.S. research, and has also conducted interviews with English speakers in other parts of the world.

Felicia works across a variety of goods and services categories. Much of her work is focused on consumer packaged goods/fast-moving consumer goods, quick-service and casual restaurants, retailing, and durable goods. Over the span of her career, she has developed an unusually-deep knowledge in a few key categories: alcohol beverages; home improvement, including HVAC (heating and cooling) equipment; and food service and food retailing.

According to Felicia, “My favorite part of my career is playing a role in an organization’s innovation process, as well as its strategy and brand development. It’s incredibly rewarding to encounter a new product in the marketplace, see an ad or a website, or hear a conversation about a great brand and know that I contributed to its development and success.”

In her off hours, Felicia is a family person, enjoying time with her husband and three grown daughters. She also spends time each week volunteering and serving children and families in her community.

He helps clients with their research needs in many areas, including customer satisfaction, concept testing, awareness and usage, advertising testing, segmentation, and brand loyalty, among others. Prior to joining Decision Analyst, Tom worked as a marketing analyst for a financial services firm and was a senior research analyst at a travel technology firm.

Tom’s approach to conducting qualitative interviews utilizes a casual, friendly, conversational style.

Tom’s primary focus is on research conducted in the U.S.

Tom works with a variety of industries and categories, but he tends to focus on consumer packaged goods, financial services, home improvement, retail, and restaurants. His experience includes working with business-to-consumer (B2C) as well as business-to-business (B2B) respondents, such as like professional contractors in the home improvement industry.

Tom’s qualitative work most often takes the form of traditional qualitative in-depth interviews (IDIs) conducted in person, by telephone, or by video chat. Tom also has experience with other online qualitative methodologies like time-extended online forums and close-ups, as well as more unconventional methods like Large-Scale Qualitative (or Big Qual), online projective open-ends, and online sentence completion.

Tom enjoys soccer and martial arts, has been a lifelong video game aficionado, and appreciates spending time outdoors working in the yard.