The Call for Speakers for North America 2025 | Trends Horizon is now open!

Alex serves as the SVP of Strategic Growth and Development for Ivy Exec, an InnovateMR company. As the co-founder of Ivy Exec, Alex originated Ivy Exec's entry into market research in 2012, and led its expansion into a dedicated market insights division, now serving over 300 clients in market research, technology, management consulting and financial services. Alex’s expertise is in leading new growth initiatives, sales, and business development efforts, with a focus on expanding the combined entity's B2B qualitative market research business with organizations seeking access to decision makers, industry influencers, and other traditionally hard-to-reach subject matter experts. Alex is a graduate of Duke University (BS in Biology, '06), an alum of Teach for America (New York City, '08), and a former Board Member for the Executive MBA Council, as well as a former Alumni Board Member for his high school, the NC School of Science and Mathematics.  

A self-proclaimed nerd with her master’s in mathematics and statistics, Megan Peitz, founder of Numerious Inc. has spent over 10 years helping some of the world's largest companies fine tune their products and services using math. 

​Megan has a passion for teaching and is a consistent guest speaker at the University of Michigan (UofM) Ross School of Business, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management and University of Virginia (UVA) Darden School of Business. 

She has also presented at many industry conferences on discrete choice techniques and most recently, her work on MaxDiff was published in the Journal of Choice Modeling (2019) and her work on Conjoint analysis won best paper at the 2019 Sawtooth Software Conference.

Kristian Alomá is the founder and CEO of Threadline, a market research and brand strategy agency built on principles of narrative psychology, consumer identity, and behavioral economics to help clients build better relationships with their audience. Kristian has a PhD in psychology and more than twenty years' experience in the marketing industry. His mission is to elevate the practice of branding with techniques that are science-based, ethical, and rewarding for consumers and businesses alike.

Passionate about driving business transformation through disruptive thinking. Business leader adept at creating winning brands and optimizing growth.

Award winning - consumer insights specialist with over 20 years of experience. The goal is to drive consumer centricity, so that every decision is anchored on consumer needs and the outcome of every data point should focus on crafting the business action. Current focus is to ‘establish best in class, insights and analytics within the global organization, by ensuring insights help address business challenges effectively and efficiently. Establish a future forward model for markets to adapt and adopt.

As Partner and Head of Innovation Solutions at Human8, Thomas leads global innovation strategies that transform businesses and create meaningful human experiences. With 15 years of experience, he has partnered with Fortune 500 companies to unlock growth by making their products, services, and communications hyper-relevant to consumers.

Thomas's expertise lies in developing and optimizing innovation solutions fueled by GenAI, leading qualitative and quantitative consumer insights programs, facilitating workshops that spark empathy, creativity, and action, and applying design thinking and open innovation methodologies.

He has had the privilege of working with iconic brands such as Anheuser-Busch, Google, L'Oréal, Mars, PepsiCo, and Bloomingdale's, delivering award-winning innovation programs that have significantly impacted their market position and growth.

Kelly Kutas is a Director at Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Customer Insight, where she leads a global team of experts who embed deep consumer understanding into high-impact, C-suite-driven strategy engagements. With over 15 years of experience in both qualitative and quantitative research, Kelly helps organizations across CPG, retail, travel, healthcare, financial services, and the nonprofit sector solve complex business challenges through a customer-centric lens.

As BCG’s resident qualitative research expert in North America, she is passionate about bringing customer voices to enterprise strategy initiatives through a blend of traditional and digital / AI-powered methodologies. In the past year, her work has shaped brand positioning, reimagined customer experiences, informed new product innovation, optimized operations, and driven enterprise workforce training strategies.

In 2024, Kelly served as a Fellow-in-Industry Lecturer at The University of Chicago, where she created and taught an original course on using qualitative methods to solve real-world strategic problems. Newly relocated to Boulder, Colorado, she finds inspiration and balance in hiking, skiing, and outdoor adventures with her husband and two energetic children.

Ayesha McAdams-Mahmoud, ScD, MPH is the Senior Director of Research & Insights for Salesforce's Commerce and Revenue Clouds. She is an experienced research leader, behavioral scientist, and public health practitioner who helps businesses and communities leverage data to co-create brighter futures and experiences. She has a doctorate in social and behavioral sciences and leverages her interdisciplinary background in the arts, journalism, public health, and behavioral science to perform, document, and measure the impact of technology, narratives, and the expressive arts on human experiences. She has more than 15 years of experience leading research initiatives in partnership with businesses, nonprofits, and communities. She resides in North Carolina, USA.