Birds & Bees

Lisa Edie

Founding Partner

Lisa started life professional a registered nurse for people with learning difficulties (RNMH), and went on to manage residential care homes. She’s spent around 14 years working in care industry. She then completed a Business Studies (specialising in management and maths for business) and moved into a specialise Strategic consultancy specialising in PZB Gap Analysis, using a market research, analysis and insight to create operational change.

Since then she has become a seasoned insight specialist with 25+ years experience combining market research, data analytics, ecconomic modeling, Insight and Idea Generation, and a hefty dose of commercial nouse to meet a wide range of client briefs. Historically a member of AURA (Association of Users of Research Agencies), AQR (Association of Qualitative Researchers) and part of the Public sector Editorial Board of the MRS.

She has extensive customer experience skills, ranging from customer satisfaction, loyalty, value for money, customer journeys, usage and attitude, segmentation and a full wider gambit across multiple industries including; food and casual dinning, utilities, financial services, and public sector.

Lisa’s is particular in the deployment of programme findings and the development of wider insight tools to allow organisations to ‘think customer’ when making decisions, this includes a range evidence gathering tools, Immersion activities to support corporate away days, and other organisation infrastructures, as well as developing activities to meet very specific business needs like information holes.
Lisa is D&B cleared and a leader of a Rainbow pack (5-7 year olds). Lisa won an award from AURA (Association of Users of Research Agencies) for Knowledge Sharing. She has a first class Business Studies degree.

Socially she enjoys cycling, ice skating, girl guiding, the arts and has recently taken up Persian cooking. She is an accomplished photographer, with her works being accepted to many international photography salons. She has recently completed her AFIAP distinction (artist of the Federation of International Art Photography) and is working toward EFIAP, the next distinction.

Email: lisa@thehiveinsight.com
Tel : 07946663496

DEFINITELY A PIRATE

Sue Dwyer

Senior Consultant

Sue enjoys getting under the skin of consumer behaviour & attitudes.  With more than 30 years in both agency and clientside consumer insight roles, she has wide-ranging experience to draw on.

She has extensive experience from running workshops and moderating focus groups & consumer depth interviews (including via Skype), and working with quantitative research and analytics data.  She has extensive international expertise.

She has specialist service industry and FMCG expertise from store location planning to branding & innovation.  She has lead Insight functions at McDonald’s UK & Bounty (the marketing channel to new & expectant mums) and has senior management experience at Mars snackfood & the global brewer SABMiller.

Like all senior Hive I&I team,  her desire to ensure that research leads to action, means that she delivers findings and recommendations embedded within a commercial context.

David Hogg

Senior Consultant

David has joined us from an extensive retail background, bringing more than 32 years of high street retailing under his belt. He started his career in John Menzies, where he quickly established himself as a capable and competent store manager, managing a range of stores from half a million to 5 million turnover.

He expanded his brand experience with a move to Office World during which time he opened two of their units in Bradford and Blackpool. David was instrumental in developing their Print World concept which was rolled out across their retail estate. He was later enticed back to John Menzies to turn around under-performing stores.

His expertise spans the full range of retail activity from store layout, customer journey and flow, instore marketing, promotional activities and detail with underperforming stores.

In his spare time, he spends a great deal of energy shuttling his two children to various martial arts and other sports competitions.

Laura Sprakman

Senior Consultant

Laura Sprackman has a first class Bachelor of Commerce degree and a Master of Science research degree in Innovation Management. During her postgraduate work, Laura worked as a qualitative interviewer and researcher, supporting Pharmaceutical Innovation research for The University of Birmingham. Post University, Laura qualified as a CIMA Management Accountant whilst training in Financial Management on the Unilever graduate programme. Laura has been a fully qualified CGMA and ACMA member since 2005.

She spent 12 years working in finance at Unilever, with much experience working integrally with brand and customer teams. More recently she has diversified her experience into Local Authority and as a CFO for a large multi Academy trust school.

Laura comes with incredible skills in both Insight and finance, having gleaned experience of both in her time in Unilever. She will be working on both qualitative and desk and apply her commercial skills to various analytical projects we undertake, and providing expertise for development of data to create powerful research supporting business cases.

She is a mum of two children and is a keen runner when she gets the opportunity to do so.

Geoff Dicks

Innovation, Design, Senior Consultant

Geoff comes from an Industrial Designer (Eng) background with over thirty years of experience in production, installation, launching and rolling out. During the first eight years of his career he worked full time for three of the top ten design consultancies in the UK gaining wide experience in product design and retail.

Geoff’s background is quite unique for any designer as he also has over twenty years full time experience with Schlumberger designing for the Oil & Gas industry including metering and utility components to ensure they were more professional and marketable appearance. He was considered the product champion and expert for all Design & Ergonomic aspects for products, work practices and some user interface recommendations for projects.

Geoff has spent some time in his past running his own Industrial Design (Eng) consultancy as well as teaching part time his skills to degree level students. He is currently widening his availability once again as a freelance Industrial Designer (Eng), for actual design, concept generation, detailing, graphics (product application or marketing), technical illustration, visual analytics, ergonomics and consultant advisory.

Geoff will be working as an associate to The Hive, on Innovation and relevant research projects.

In his spare time he is a talented Photographer, and after some pondering felt he was more Ninja than pirate.

Abi Almond

Insight & Idea Generator

Abi has been a qualitative researcher for the last 25yrs, needless to say such epic experience has equipped her with the full range of qualitative research skills, from Ethnographic, to conflict groups, hard to reach audiences and a vast array of different industries and project types, working for many of the giant advertising agencies, public sector programmes of work, and many, many consumer brands.  Expertise include but is not limited to New Product and Service Development, MarComs and extensive behavioural change.

Abi is currently working on her Masters in Psychotherapy, so will largely work on a project by project basis adding weight to our qualitative moderation and rich psychological context into our analysis processes.  It’s a privilege to have her working on some of our projects.

Definitely Ninja – balance of East and West, more artful, more deadly, definitely cooler (!), more polished and sophisticated, more interesting and exotic, broader horizons than just ‘treasure’!

Elizabeth Chodyniecka

Consultant Statistical

Big Bee's

Here at The Hive we have working relationships with several industry experts who are a-buzz with extensive industry experience.  We call upon this expert work with us on projects and other work which requires further senior muscle power.   Many of these seniors have extensive experience working with or for large organisations both in the private sector and in the public sector. We nurture these relationships carefully as it gives us and our clients the benefit of senior input without the overhead.

In addition, we also have ties to specialist worker bees including statisticians, economists, psychologists and many others from related disciplines whose skills contribute to deeper understanding of why people do what they do.

Emily Kitson

Insighter

Emily has a BSc in Psychology from University of Surrey and has an extensive research background as her degree incorporated various research programmes using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. She has a particular interest in organisational psychology. Emily has research experience with vulnerable groups such as adolescents who engage in risk-taking behaviours, people with learning and physical difficulties and people with dementia. In addition, she worked for HALOW Charity in a role to support people with cerebral palsy so to improve their quality of life and sense of self worth.

Emily enjoys artistic pursuits and is a keen horse rider in her spare time.

Rhys Isles

Rhys graduated from Bournemouth University, receiving a BSc in Psychology. Rhys dissertation was titled “Are online social sharing habits affected by an individual’s personality?”, with the research conducted used a quantitative statistical analysis. The research discovered the participant’s personality traits and then analysed to see if there was a correlation between these traits and their online sharing habits. Throughout his degree Rhys has conducted many forms of qualitative and quantitative studies.

Rhys spent two years with Entura working as an Anti-Piracy Analyst. He was responsible for surveying the Internet for films and television shows, which were illegally available for streaming and torrenting on unauthorised websites. Following this process, the sites were contacted and asked to remove the films. If not removed promptly, he would be tasked with removing them. During his time with Entura, he worked to remove the works of major film companies such as; Sony, Warner Brothers and Universal.

Other work has included a cross section of areas; from retail, catering and radio presenting, where Rhys trained new presenters, developing their skills to be successful for Miskin radio.

Besides work, Rhys is musical and has played musical instruments since childhood. He started with pianos then developed his skills with guitars, violins and drums. Currently Rhys is working on a project where he writes the music for all the instruments and brings other musicians to perform the parts whilst he sings and performs alongside them. Alongside music Rhys has a keen interest in chess. Playing since childhood, Rhys found limited opportunities to play like minded individuals and to rectify this Rhys developed a chess club for children. The aim of club was to hold tournaments for young chess players and get more children playing. The chess club is based online and has members across the world from USA to the Netherlands and Britain.