30Under30 Nominee: Georgia Goodrum

Great to hear from Global 30 Under 30 Nominee, Georgia Goodrum, an Insight Manager at FIS Group, a specialist food and drink consultancy. Georgia works remotely from Lincolnshire in the UK. Georgia’s role brings together two things she is very passionate about: food and understanding consumers. Outside of work, Georgia has an allotment with her grandad where they grow their own food, which she also documents on social media.

How did you find your way into research, data and insights?

My career into insights actually started with being made redundant. I knew from a young age I wanted to work with food, from my first Saturday job when I was 14 at my local butchers and working at my local Chinese takeaway restaurant during sixth form, to starting my first ‘proper’ job in operations at a food manufacturing business. Food has always been a part of my journey.

However, my career in insights didn’t start until I was made redundant during my degree apprenticeship just 18 months into my first full-time role. I had started to hear people on my apprenticeship course talk about insights, a role that gave consumers a voice in the food industry, so when I was made redundant, I took the opportunity to explore insights as a career route.

That’s how I ended up at FIS Group, an agency that combined my passion for food and drink with consumer insights. So, I joined them just a few weeks later, completing my degree apprenticeship, whilst learning everyday about consumer insights and how data can be transformed to create stories that deliver actionable outcomes for our clients.

What part of your work are you most proud of and why?

One of the things I’m most proud of is how I’ve started to develop my client relationships from individual projects into much more long-term partnerships.

When I first took on one particular client, we were working together on just a few projects a year, mainly around product testing. I’ve made a real effort to show that our support doesn’t end when a project does. I keep an eye on what’s happening in their category, share relevant launches and developments and look for opportunities where we could support them beyond the original brief.

That relationship has grown into a much more significant ongoing commitment, with our work expanding from product testing into more strategic services. It now feels like we’re an extension of their business rather than simply a research supplier.

I’m really proud of that, and it’s something I’ve started to build across other client relationships too. For me, it’s about becoming someone clients trust to understand their business, bringing them useful thinking and helping them answer the questions they haven’t necessarily thought to ask yet.

What have you learned so far that you wish you’d known when you started your career?

One thing I wish I’d known when I started is that your career path doesn’t have to be linear, and that’s okay. I think there can be a lot of pressure early on to know exactly where you want to go, what you want to specialise in and what the next step should be.

I’ve learnt that some of the best opportunities come from being open to where things take you, rather than having everything mapped out. The experiences I’ve had so far, particularly working across different food and drink clients, have shaped what I enjoy and where I want to develop in ways I couldn’t have predicted when I started.

I’m much more comfortable now with the idea that a career is something you build as you go, rather than something you need to have figured out from the beginning.

What excites you most about the future of insights and what would you like to help change?

I’m relatively new to insights, but over the last few years, working with some incredible clients across food and drink has given me a real sense of how the role of insight is evolving. I’m seeing insight move from something that supports decisions to something that increasingly helps shape them. In such a fast-moving industry, where consumer tastes and behaviours can change quickly, I’ve seen first-hand how valuable that perspective can be.

What excites me is where this is going next. As technology and AI make it easier to access and analyse more information, I think the most valued insight professionals will be those who can make sense of it, create a compelling story and turn it into clear, actionable decisions. I’d love to help make insights feel less like a final checkpoint and more like an integral part of how businesses think, innovate and make decisions.

What advice would you give someone just starting out in the industry today?

Be curious, and don’t worry about knowing everything. Three years into the industry, I’m still learning every day, and I think that’s one of the best things about insights. There’s always something new to learn and another question to ask.

I’d also say don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. I’ve always been quite shy and never thought I’d be confident enough to stand up and present insights and data, but my role has changed that. I feel like I’ve instilled a confidence in myself, to reach out to people, share my opinion and back myself. I’ve learnt that if you really know your story, presenting it becomes much easier.

So, my advice would be: don’t worry about feeling confident straight away. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there, and the confidence comes with it.

Who has helped you along the way?

There is an endless list of people who have impacted my career along the way, but I am also really lucky to have some strong female role models in our business, such as our Managing Director, Kelly Dowson, and our Group Insight Director (and my manager), Helen Blair. I also entered my career with a cohort of supportive apprentices, some of whom I still reach out to and work closely with. Finally, I need to mention my incredibly supportive family, and my dad, who has always been a role model for my interest in business studies, which led me on my path to insights.