* no research experts were harmed in the making of Do Penguins Eat Peaches?
I Interviewed 12 brilliant minds for my book. Curious to see their beautiful faces? Here they are. Have a scroll and find out about the people behind the interviews. Haven’t read the book yet? Buy here.
Meet the contributors*
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Nana Parry is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Tectonic, a research firm that helps companies understand customers.
He works with start-ups and FTSE 250 companies with a client base spanning 12 different countries.
Nana also runs a Venture Studio, helping large corporations create businesses from scratch. He lectures business students at Imperial College London, UCL, London Business School and Capital Enterprise.
Prior to his founder journey, Nana worked for tech companies like Fujitsu and Rackspace, delivering multi-million-dollar projects and running large teams.
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Dana has consulted for NASA, McKinsey, Google, Virgin, Veeva and start-ups including MURAL, Andela, Butter, Prelo and UnderPinned.
With a distinguished career in both customer research and award-winning copywriting, Dana is the founder and CEO of Publicover & Co, a growth marketing agency specializing in rapid and sustainable start-up growth.
She is the author of Empathy at Scale, Conversations with Customers and DIY Marketing for Startups and the ghost-writer of more than a dozen non-fiction titles. She is a US expat and lives in Hamburg, Germany.
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Sara is the CEO of Outwitly Inc. and a design strategist. She is an expert in ethnographic research methods, UX and service design. She is passionate about human-centred approaches to innovation.
Prior to founding Outwitly, Sara worked in Silicon Valley for Fortune 500 clients such as Apple, AT&T and Microsoft. She is also the former UX Director for one of the top 10 media companies in the US where she led the consumer products design and research teams.
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Lennart is a pioneer in games, gamification and user experience.
As Professor of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) in Games at University of Waterloo, he explores how user experience of video and exercise games can drive engagement and change behaviours.
Over the past 15 years, he has published more than 200 academic papers and a bestselling book on Games User Research. A sought-after keynote speaker, Lennart has advised organizations worldwide on effective gamification strategies.
He was recognized among the top 10 HCI scholars of the last decade and the top 2% of scientists worldwide.
His ground-breaking work continues to shape how we understand and apply games research.
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Jonny is a product leader with a background in product management, experience strategy and digital innovation.
He’s got lots of consulting experience (ThoughtWorks, AWS), and has worked in staff teams too (Amazon).
He is the author of Understanding Design Thinking, Lean, and Agile (O’Reilly, 2017).
Jonny lives in Melbourne, consults globally and makes fine furniture in his spare time.
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Caroline has over 20 years’ experience taking complex business challenges from the world’s largest brands and finding solutions.
She started her career in financial services data and then the retail world, before moving into senior research agency roles.
In 2009, she opened Vireo Research, and in 2019 she launched a product and online store for neurodiverse kids and their parents.
She’s also a board member and former college instructor. She loves to chat about research and data as the solution to many of our big decisions, but also other important stuff like the best snacks, neurodivergent parenting and growing your own food.
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Trina is a UX researcher and designer who started her career as a User Interface (UI) developer.
She loves solving complex design challenges and spends most of her time learning how to design more inclusive experiences.
When she is not writing, she enjoys watching social and cultural documentaries, live music and travelling.
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Jane is CEO of the MRS. She moved into the research, data and insights sector after a career running the gamut from CMO to brand and strategy leadership.
As Customer Director of HMRC she was awarded a CBE for the development of innovative corporate strategies based on deep customer insight.
She also holds numerous creative and marketing awards from her time at Unilever, Shell and the BBC.
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Adam Forbes is an advisor to corporates, start-ups and individuals, as well as founder of Familiarize, a marketing consultancy for small and medium sized businesses, and is a programme director and mentor for the global accelerator, Startupbootcamp.
He has spent more than 25 years working in and with large corporate organizations in marketing, business development and innovation, always with an eye on creating value for the customer.
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Diana is a serial entrepreneur who entered the United States as a refugee from Ukraine at the age of eight. By her early thirties, she’d launched and sold millions of dollars’ worth of products and services.
Today, she is an innovation consultant, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author whose books have been taught in over one hundred universities.
She can juggle, do a handstand, though not at the same time... yet.
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Tori has spent her career understanding what people put in their baskets and why.
Her early career was spent at Nielsen, focused on the ‘what’; analysing sales performance, shopper behaviour and predicting innovation success for globally recognized brands.
The ‘why’ came in 2018 when Tori went freelance and moved into emotion analytics; leveraging hybrid text analytics and online reviews to discover how people feel about products, and why, so innovators can meet real customer needs.
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Tamara is the founder of the pricing consultancy Nine Nine Lab. She has over seven years of experience building pricing strategies across industries ranging from e-commerce to AI and SaaS.
With a Masters in Finance and an Undergraduate in Psychology, she understands the right mix of numbers and psychology that’ll get you to a successful strategy.
Her clients include Groupon, Wiggle, Lovecrafts, Elzin, Utilita and Finalis.