TRIP | The Research Inclusion Project – Details, episodes & analysis

Check the assumptions you have about target audiences - especially with Black consumers. Don't assume the data you have is enough, look into the nuances to guide your business decisions.

Dawn's team at Mahogany Minds helps brand teams not only ask questions, but to learn more but know the optimal questions to ask to get beyond initial perceptions. 

On this episode Dawn talks about brands that have successfully - and sometimes less successfully! - connect with Black consumers.

Everyone's living a different experience and it's important to make Black customers feel seen. That indicates a long term commitment by the brand and helps create an authentic relationship with the brand. 

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Connect with Dawn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnvcarr/

Join Mahogany www.mahogany-minds.com 

Work with Mahogany: www.mahoganyinsights.com 

"When we improve products for accessibility we improve the experience for everyone." 

Annabel Weiner, UX Manager, Accessibility at Ally inspires organisations to proactively ensure people with disabilities are included in usability work across the board, especially shifting it to the earlier side of research efforts. Including these voices early – especially in the prototyping and discovery stages – saves a lot of time in the development and testing phases later on.

Annabel also sympathizes with those struggling for those getting funding and suggests talking about how including those with accessibility really does improve market share and WOM recommendations.

Her challenge for TRIP listeners? Try to build accessibility into one of your routine research practices. And know it's OK to make mistakes and modifications! Just get comfortable asking about making modifications to ensure they can participate in the research.

Check out Annabel's recommended resources: https://inclusivedesign24.org/2025/ and https://www.deque.com/axe-con/

This is a Live Recording with guest Stacy Penna of Lumivero recorded at TQR (The Qualitative Report). Stacy is Lumivero's Growth Marketing Director and host of Between the Data, a NVivo Podcast Series. She shares her thoughts on the importance of inclusive insights with TRIP on the TQR stage, with time built for audience Q&A. 

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As the Growth Marketing Director of Lumivero’s research software: Citavi, NVivo, @RISK and XLSTAT, Stacy is committed to managing the research growth marketing team to develop global campaigns from strategy to final marketing execution. Her team develops and implements successful marketing initiatives, such as thought leadership events, the Lumivero Community, Lumivero Conference, across digital and traditional channels to promote their software globally. 

Think about it in 3 steps, based on your level of control and influence:

1 - Start by reflecting on yourself: take a personal Inventory of yourself and your practices, and personal education. 

2 - Then reflect on your work/your team: take a second inventory, this time of your work- what biases are built in there, what do you have the power to control.

3 - Finally reflect on your environment/industry/larger picture. Think about the larger systemic changes of the way you work and the way your company does business.

Tune in to hear more about Discover’s Equity Sequence Model and their recent ESG Report: https://www.discover.com/company/esg/2022-esg-report/home/?cmpgnid=leap____&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=LEAP&utm_source=LinkedIn.

And try Jessica's tip to 'language challenge' yourself using The Micropedia of Microaggressions https://www.themicropedia.org/

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As Director of Consumer Insights, Jessica uses consumer insights to drive growth in Discover's lending and deposits products. She leads a team of insights professionals, with expertise across the product suite, combining macro consumer trends, competitive intelligence, syndicated data, and custom qualitative and quantitative research to drive decision making. She has a passion for understanding the "whys" behind consumer behavior and choices through consumer research. 

In episode 5 of season 4, we meet Ricardo and Hung, the founders of BIEN, a motion design company driven by diversity and inclusion and a pioneer in their industry. Their personal experiences and cultural backgrounds led them to create BIEN in 2017 with the mission of making inclusion the foundation of their business. The motion design industry has historically has lacked representation of diverse voices, but Ricardo and Hung have actively strategized to make their company inclusive in every aspect. From their practices to resourcing, they've fostered an environment that promotes diversity. BIEN is sparking a new generational shift in the motion design industry, inspiring change and broader representation for designers and artists. Join us as we explore their inspiring journey and learn how embracing diversity can bring positive transformation to the creative world.

In our conversation with Anouar, we discussed that behavior-based methodologies bring authenticity to work versus analyzing claims on wants and needs. Anouar shares his academic background and brings a new perspective to inclusivity, sharing how authentic behavior is not tied to personal identity. And we can forecast the future by looking at habits and wagering on different scenarios. As we continue the strides of data quality and inclusion in our work, Anouar brings a fresh challenge by staying proactive, understanding bias' in the methodology to different audiences, and putting in place an auditing method to verify the data responses.

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Anouar El Haji is the Founder and CEO of Veylinx. He is known for introducing with Veylinx a Nobel Prize-winning methodology to the world of market research. Veylinx supports leading brands with a better understanding of wants and needs to make strategic product decisions with confidence.

Anouar is the recipient of several awards among which the Young Talent Award from the Dutch Market Research Association. Anouar holds a PhD degree in Marketing and two master's degrees all from the University of Amsterdam. His articles have been published in scientific journals and various media. He is a visiting scholar at the Amsterdam Business School.

Veylinx currently has offices in Amsterdam, New York and Casablanca.

Today's episode discusses the evergreen benefits of working with diverse-owned suppliers including driving increased brand consistency, benefiting the communities the supplier operates within and represents, and improving work quality through different perspectives and approaches to problem solving, and how those benefits increase when using a supplier who authentically represents a specific target audience.

Guest, Wynter Blanquet-Warren, cautions that so much of the hurdle to effective DEI efforts and supplier diversity programs is the "lack of humanity." The solution: proactively put more partners and suppliers in front of marketing teams to remove barriers and help them meet their diversity goals, learn how to "be the face" and champion of supplier diversity within your organization, dig into your history, find your own triggers and motivations to be vulnerable, and have conversations about what you want to achieve so you can create community around the discussion.

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Wynter Blanquet-Warren, is the current Director of Creative & Business Operations at Walmart, is a marketing leader with deep experience in creative operations, account management, and outsourcing strategies. During her time in advertising, she led cross-functional teams in support of partners across financial services, CPG, and lifestyle brands. Transitioning into the tech industry, Wynter joined Sage Software to stand up project management and creative operations as part of a new global brand team. As Head of Agency Operations & Purchasing at Meta, Wynter led strategy, implementation and operations for a global preferred supplier program aimed at improving quality of work, performance, and cost savings for outsourced global business marketing programs and content. As a DEI champion, she also launched an internal supplier diversity initiative at Meta to galvanize incremental spend and support for diverse businesses.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wblanquet-warren/

In this episode, we discuss the importance of including a ‘cultural broker’ on your team; someone fluent in the culture - not just the language - who can weigh in on planning and materials to ensure they will resonate with your target audience(s).  We also talk through how to prioritize translations and transcriptions, when AI can help, and when a human is needed to include cultural subtleties and nuances along the way. Jill recommends proactively lining up a partner you can trust and reminds us to seek out diverse voices in all projects, not just those that specifically request or require their inclusion.

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Jill Kushner Bishop, PhD

Founder & CEO, Multilingual Connections

No matter where in the world Jill is or what she’s doing – she’s always focusing on creating connections across languages and cultures. After studying and teaching internationally, Jill brought her PhD in Linguistic Anthropology to the corporate world, where she worked as a user researcher for Sapient and then oversaw Language, Culture & Diversity Programs for 100+ Chipotle Mexican Grill locations. 

In 2005, she launched Multilingual Connections to help organizations understand, engage, and grow their multilingual audiences. Their customized services include translation, transcription, multimedia localization, and bilingual research support services. When she’s not working, Jill  is spending time with her husband and teen son, renovating houses, and trying to make her garden grow.

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkbishop/⁠ 

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/multilingual-connections⁠ 

⁠https://www.facebook.com/multilingualconnections⁠ 

⁠https://www.instagram.com/multilingual_connections⁠ 

⁠https://twitter.com/m_connections⁠  

In the episode, we discuss the pursuit of constant curiosity of humans and how language, articulation, and staying mindful of how to remain inclusive.

From recognizing unconscious bias from the screening to pulling back the layers of training our ears to new environments, we uncover how to bring our authentic voice to the conversation. She challenges TRIP listeners to reflect on "am I making an effort to continue exposure and train my ear to listen from a new environment, accent, or group of individuals"? Aïcha gives some valuable takeaways: hold space for the who, be more intentional on screener questions for articulation and be fearless in challenging some of the demographic groups targeted in your insights work.

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Aïcha Ly is a trilingual, solutions-driven market and competitive intelligence strategist, speaker, and activist. She is the Founder and CEO of SITB LLC, a values-driven boutique firm specializing in public speaking coaching and message crafting and Head of Consumer Insights at OpenSignal. A native of Senegal, West Africa, Aïcha draws from her experience being a triple minority – female, a foreigner, and Black – in leadership roles at several Fortune 1000 companies, to champion and advocate for others. Aïcha brings a wealth of knowledge and life experience, sharing the power of linguistics and the importance of inclusive insights, including her research and TEDx presentation on unconscious bias related to regional, racial, and international accents.

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aichaly/
• SITB LLC - https://www.sitbstudio.com/
• TEDx Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxgQ0WqV0Zc&t=2s
• VoxPopMe - https://site.voxpopme.com/
• OpenSignal - https://www.opensignal.com/

Today's conversation with Kisha stresses that getting innovative and inclusive is not only necessary, it's an opportunity. She encourages TRIP listeners to "be more bold and brave and do things differently...dig deeper, challenge and push" because our systems have been built on bias. She challenges insights professionals to peel the layers back and dig deeper on everything, even when it seems tiring, and also offers our listeners C Space's Inclusive Screener report and Mindset Map quiz to use it as a framework in our work.

• C-Space's Inclusive Screener Report
• C-Space's DEI Mindset Map

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Kisha Payton is currently Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at C Space, where she brings over 15 years of experience building cross-functional teams that make change happen. A graduate of Spelman College and Duke University School of Law, Kisha combines her nonprofit, legal and for-profit backgrounds to help companies change the way they view Diversity and Inclusion. She currently resides in Atlanta, GA with her son Lawson where she spends her spare time as an amateur iPad artist.