16 October 2018—Scottsdale, AZ—Women in Research (WIRe) celebrated their second annual presentation of the WIRe MRX Diversity Champion Award at The Market Research Event (TMRE), recognizing Babita Earle, Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at ZappiStore, as the first-place Gold award winner and JD Deitch, Chief Revenue Officer at P2Sample, as the Silver award winner.

Gold award winner Babita Earle leads the Partnerships team at Zappi. Her job is to drive mutually successful relationships with the company’s partners as well as identifying future and prospective partners. Babita is passionate about technology and how it is changing our industry. Being part of Zappi has meant she can now play an instrumental role in helping the MRX industry evolve further. Babita started her career as a Statistician but has since spent 20 years in the research industry holding a diverse set of roles from managing leading senior research and commercial teams to setting up behavioral based digital media research business.

Babita, commenting on the award and diversity initiatives in the industry, noted that, “Our industry has an opportunity to lead the way as we are here to represent the views of the Consumer - any Consumer, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, age or sexual orientation. We are making progress. I see a lot of great initiatives from setting diversity manifestos to grass root partnerships with schools. However, what we do in this area should not be a series of special projects but should be part of an organisations' DNA. We all need to be accountable for our own thoughts and actions and look after each other.”

Silver award winner JD Deitch is a 20-year veteran of the market research industry. He began his career client-side in financial services, then went on to hold senior global positions at The NPD Group and Ipsos. Prior to P2Sample, he held executive positions at AYTM and Bakamo.Social. JD is a frequent speaker and a thought leader in the insights industry as it evolves to tackle the challenges of the digital age.

“I have been profoundly and positively influenced by a global community of women, people of color, the LGBTQ community and, more recently, people of many different nationalities,” said winner JD Deitch. “Diversity opens our eyes and broadens our perspectives—it is an essential, elemental quality of shared humanity that we, as individual researchers and as a community, should promote and guarantee at every turn.”

The MRX Diversity Champion award was created to honor individuals—male and female—who are actively embracing all aspects of diversity: encouraging investment in a diverse workforce in market research, and embodying the values of respect, dignity, autonomy, and equality. The award was created in collaboration with TMRE and presented Denene Jonielle Rodney, Founder of Zebra Strategies, in its inaugural year.

“It is a privilege to be able to recognize and honor Babita and JD with our Diversity Champion Award for the work they’ve been doing to drive greater inclusion and diversity. This effort is a vital component of industry growth and innovation, and it starts with individuals working to make a difference,” said Kristin Luck, Founder of Women in Research.

About WIRe

Women in Research (WIRe) is a global non-profit that champions diversity in the marketing research industry, supporting events and educational programming across five continents. WIRe programming facilitates leadership, entrepreneurship, mentoring and other career development goals. WIRe’s mission is to foster inclusion and advance the contributions and voice of women and other marginalized groups in research, both for themselves and the greater good of the market research industry. www.womeninresearch.org

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