A youth filled with travel and an extended period living in Italy formed the perfect foundation for a career in global trends and insights.

Heather Prekop is currently a strategic advisor for the firm, Latana, after 16 years at Euromonitor International. Along the way, she became an elite marathon runner and a personal running coach at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.

Heather shares the importance of playing the long game when it comes to both marathoning and building business and companies. She also discusses why partnership is so important right now in the insights space and the music she’d want to keep her company if stranded on a desert island.

Loretta Hudelot is currently a professor of marketing research and social impact marketing at the University of Texas at Dallas.

With equal parts grit, scrappiness and creativity, Loretta worked her way into the market research field and built a great career with companies like Verizon, Dr. Pepper and Brinker International.

Loretta shares her journey through insights, the lessons she’s learned along the way and how green Skittles can catalyze your innovation thinking.

Oh, to be Robert McLaughlin at the dawn of the millennium – living in NYC, working in research for the super hot dot-com, DoubleClick, starting a record label and playing in an indie band sharing bills with the likes of The Strokes and Interpol.

He went on to hold senior insights roles at AOL, Spin Media and Popsugar before founding the consultancy, DCDR, writing a book, and continuing to run and record solo material for Inner Noise Records.

Rob shares his fascinating journey and why, as both a songwriter and an insights professional, he’s never satisfied with the first draft.