How did you get there? Jackie Chan

Great to hear from Jackie who is an insights and strategy leader with 20+ years of experience in global B2B and B2C research, analytics and consulting in the Financial Services and Tech sectors.  She is currently a Research Director at Meta, serving as the Chair for the Board of the Insights Association, and as an advisory board member for Women in Research.  She is a first generation Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong, came to the U.S. in the late 80s and lived in New York until her last employer took me to New Jersey, where she currently lives with her husband, her 13 year old son Jordan and her two senior dogs (17 years old) Zoe the Rat terrier and Stewie the Chihuahua.

So, how did you get into the industry, and take us through how you got to this point?

I started out as an accountant at a small consultancy and that’s where I learned about the insights profession. After a year, I stepped into an analyst role there and realized how much I enjoyed scoping problems, digging into data and framing stories with data. So I ended up approaching the CEO with a proposition to financially sponsor my MBA in marketing research and he did and I learned a ton in my 7 years there at that agency. From there I was recruited to Prudential Financial where I ended up spending 14 years, the last 5 of which leading their centralized insights & analytics function. I came to Meta 4 years ago and am still having so much fun!

Why should anyone consider a career in market research, data and insights?

Because you get to use both the left and right side of your brain! There aren’t many fields where it takes both analytical and creative thinking to drive real business impact. It truly blends science and art, where you leverage not only all of the technical and methodological skills that are required, but also the art of things like storytelling, with an impact orientation to solve real world problems. (Here’s me preaching about it at the Corporate Researchers Conference one year, talking about superpowers and business impact)

Career paths are rarely without challenges. Can you share an honest moment from your career when things didn’t go quite according to plan, but the lessons remain with you to this day?

During my early days as a people manager, there were many challenges around understanding my own leadership style and how best to work with those that may be very different. For example, I am much more of a thinker than I am a feeler, so there were some early lessons learned around active listening as opposed to jumping into problem solving.  I’ve also had to learn how people can still arrive at different conclusions even if presented with the same set of facts, so especially as a leader, you have to make what may be implicit to you explicit to others.

What two things should junior researchers focus on as they progress in their careers?

1/ Make sure you have the fundamentals – that you are well grounded in the technical competencies to demonstrate quality and rigor, whether you’re a qual, quant or mixed methods researcher. 

2/ Make sure you know what the job actually is – I tell my team all the time that you’re not just a researcher, you are a business or a product leader and research or analytics are just tools. At the end of the day, these tools are deployed to solve real world business problems, so you have to make sure you understand the business strategy and how your research findings affect that. 

Do you have any advice for our sector?

For our industry to continue to be relevant, adaptability and a growth mindset will remain critically important, especially in the age of AI, which is a technology that is rapidly evolving on a daily basis. But remember that AI is built on training data that is known, so it isn’t going to be great at innovating new thinking or new ideas to solve problems, especially complex or novel problems  or those that may require a high degree of emotional intelligence.

And do you have anyone who has helped your career so far that you’d like to acknowledge and say thanks or give a shout out to?

There really are too many to name…  but I will give a special shout out to the one that took a chance on me back in 2000 and opened the door to research for me – Andy Bose– the CEO who perhaps saw something in me, enough to agree to the company sponsoring my masters. I learned so much in those first 7 years of my career. I’m proud to say we’ve stayed in touch all these years!