Some careers are a straight line from one role to the next, but most are composed of twists and turns that can be difficult to navigate and hard to imagine. WIRe Founder Kristin Luck will sit down with industry veteran Eileen Campbell to have an honest and informative conversation on the topic of building a portfolio career, diving into the details of what it takes to do so, tactics to mitigate the stress of change, and how to come out on top.
A BIG thank you to Fuel + The Focus Room for supporting this series and making it free, year after year, for the WIRe community!
Meet Eileen Campbell. She describes herself as “The Fairy Godmother of the Insights Industry." She's been conquering the business world since her first job at 14 and entered the insights industry at the ripe old age of 19 while still in university. After starting her career in Toledo, Ohio, she opened her first office for an agency in Minneapolis one week after her 26th birthday and went on to build the US operations of the Angus Reid Group before moving to Toronto to help launch ARG’s global efforts. Eileen served as Global CEO at Millward Brown (now Kantar), steering the organization to become a $1B consultancy during her 14 year tenure. After leaving Millward Brown, Eileen briefly retired before becoming CMO at IMAX. During her tenure, IMAX experienced its highest growth cycle & stock performance and she was named one of Hollywood’s most influential marketing executives by Variety (she also got to meet a lot of VERY cool people!) She then co-founded Reid Campbell Group, now Rival Group, growing it to nearly $30MM in revenue in under 5 years. While she’s recently stepped away from an active role in Rival Group management, she remains an investor in the company and the team’s biggest cheerleader!
Eileen currently serves on the board of Pure Spectrum and Preface Global and was previously a member of the board of NASDAQ-listed Monotype prior to its take-private sale to private equity investors. These days, Eileen’s time is filled with writing, consulting, and advisory work under the banner of Womintuition. When she’s not working, Eileen enjoys life in the country in the tiny village of Creemore, Ontario where she gardens, golfs and generally lazes about (if you’ve seen any Hallmark movie ever, that’s life in Creemore!). She is married to her beloved husband, Struan Robertson, and is active in efforts to raise awareness of the life-giving power of organ donation as well as organizations committed to advancing social justice and women’s careers.
Kristin Luck serves as an advisor and growth strategist to a number of cutting-edge marketing and analytics technology and services firms through her consultancy, ScaleHouse. She is the founder of two marketing analytics companies that she led to successful exits. Kristin co-founded OTX, an online research business that was named the fastest growing research firm in the world in 2002 and 2003 and was subsequently acquired by Pilot Group and again by Ipsos in 2007. She then founded Forefront Consulting Group, a research technology firm that was acquired by Decipher. Decipher was acquired by FocusVision in 2014 after seven consecutive years of double- and triple-digit growth. FocusVision merged with Confirmit in 2021 to become Forsta, where she sat on the the Board of Directors until its recent acquisition by Press Ganey.
Kristin is a licensed investment banker with Oberon Securities and a founder focused on helping fellow founders and executive teams scale and monetize their businesses. Her deal expertise on both sides of transactions comes from participating in both acquisitions and exits from $30 million to $225 million. She is also passionate about supporting founders in international markets execute their entry into the U.S.Kristin regularly contributes to both the commercial (Fast Company, Forbes) and academic press (Research World, Journal of Brand Strategy) where she explores emerging marketing and research methods. She is consistently ranked as one of the top 100 sales and branding experts to follow on social media.
In addition to Founding, Women in Research, Kristin has also served on the board of ESOMAR, the global insights and analytics association, for eight years; including a two year term as Vice-President and a two year term as President.
