September 19th, 2024 — New York, New York — Women in Research (WIRe), a global non-profit organization that champions diversity in the marketing research industry, has announced the winners of their eighth-annual WIRe MRX Diversity Champion award. WIRe partnered with the Insights Association and FUEL + Focus Room to celebrate the occasion during the Corporate Researchers Conference (CRC) in New York today. This year’s Gold and Silver award winners are FedEx’s Jamila Watson and Equitas Insight’s Ana Maria Santos respectively. 

Gold award winner Jamila Watson brings over 25 years of marketing research, branding and innovation experience to her career at FedEx. As Insights & Research Advisor within the Global Customer Insights organization, she leads global end-to-end research efforts with a primary focus on customer-centric innovation and design initiatives. Committed to growth & development, Jamila is a 2024 graduate of the McKinsey & Co. Black Management Leadership Accelerator program hosted by the FedEx Black Professional Network. A FedEx Culture Ambassador, Jamila serves as a DEI Delegate for her Vice President's organization, leading efforts to boost diversity, equity and inclusion awareness and to foster impactful dialogue and meaningful connections. Jamila is a sought-after industry enthusiast — presenting at research conferences, serving on Temple University’s MSMR Industry Advisory Board and a steering committee member of the Professional Insights Collaborative, a Quirk’s Marketing Research end-client research group. She is also a community leader and her passion for servant leadership is intrinsically weaved into all aspects of her life. Jamila is heavily engaged with local nonprofit organizations such as the YWCA, the Hamilton County Commission on Women and Girls, and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation: Cincinnati Black Giving Circle Steering Committee. Nominators cited Jamila’s commitment to community action, as well as her role as a champion of diversity efforts within her workplace and industry at large, as the impetus behind her nomination. 

This year’s Silver award winner Ana Maria Santos is an international marketing strategist. She builds successful partnerships as an organizational consultant, maximizing client participation across all dimensions of the organization, achieving realistic short and long term operational impact. She is a capability builder by design, with a passion for driving transformational change that ‘sticks’ and creates real impact. She began her professional career in Brazil, her home country, as a B2B marketing manager in blue chip industrial and manufacturing organizations. Ana Maria then transitioned into academia and a distinguished career in marketing consultancy. She served as an Adjunct Professor for undergraduate and graduate Strategic Marketing courses at her Alma Mater, ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing). She co-founded Equitas Insight, a consultancy aiming to drive structural, necessary and realistic practical DEIB advances in the workplace, creating Organizational Equitable Practices and Impact. Our judging panel noted that Ana Maria’s “efforts creating and building the Insights Association’s IDEAtor program, managed through the IDEA Council, have been nothing short of phenomenal, and now the industry has at least 14 newly employed individuals who work in the industry because of that program.”

On announcement of the award, FUEL Founder Tiffany Hays emphasized that, “Embracing a more vibrant and inclusive market research industry continues to be of paramount importance. As the world becomes increasingly multifaceted, our industry must embrace change actively; the winners of WIRe's MRX Diversity Champion award are ideal examples of the change we need to see.” She went on to say that, “taking part in this award program is incredibly close to the hearts of our teams at FUEL and The Focus Room and we take immense pride in ensuring our diverse team is supported and spotlighted for the exceptional work that they do. We're honored to recognize and celebrate those actively championing the cause to ensure that MRX organizations represent all genders, sexualities, nationalities, races, and religions. We're thrilled to be at the forefront of a transformative and ongoing movement and to support the WIRe community.”

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For more information on the award, please visit https://www.womeninresearch.org/mrx-diversity-champion-award or reach out to jessica@womeninresearch.org