Who Should Attend IIEX West 2026?
IIEX West 2026 is built for the people commissioning, conducting, and applying customer research inside organizations: consumer insights leaders, UX researchers, research operations teams, behavioral scientists, and measurement and CX professionals.
Taking place October 27–28 at Pier 27 in San Francisco, the event brings together three stages, sixteen hosted roundtables, and a program focused on the challenges insights professionals are working through right now.
But “insights professional” can mean very different things depending on your role.
Here’s a closer look at who will get the most from two days at IIEX West, along with the sessions and conversations most relevant to each.
1. You lead an insights function
If you own a research team, a research budget, or the question of what your function needs to become over the next few years, there’s a significant part of the IIEX West agenda built around those decisions.
The focus isn’t simply on which methods to use, but also on how the role of insights itself is changing.
Alex Hernandez-Brun, Insights Lead at Mozilla, tackles that question directly in What’s a Researcher’s Job Now?
Flavia Stoian, Head of Research & Insights at Candescent, presents The Build: Inside an AI-Native Insights Function, offering a look at what it takes to actually build one.
Sam Wong, Senior Director of Data & AI at Mark Anthony Group, covers The Innovation Engine: How to Build an AI Incubator, while Layton Cox of Sedulo Group asks Your Employees Already Know. Are You Listening?
Several of the sixteen roundtables also speak directly to insights leaders: The ROI of Insights, which focuses on demonstrating the value of research in a faster, cheaper environment; Insights Influence & Socialization, on helping findings reach the right people and drive action; Startup Mentality in Insights; and Storytelling with Data.
If you’re being asked to prove the value of insights while also rethinking how the work gets done, these are conversations worth being part of.
2. You work in UX research
IIEX West is also built for UX, product, and design researchers working in a world where the boundaries between UX research and traditional market research are becoming less distinct.
Confirmed brand-side UX researchers include:
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Susan Blank, Senior UX Researcher at Airbnb
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Lauren Cheatham, Principal User Researcher at Roblox
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Mike Carlon, Director of User Experience Research at Charter Communications
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Maya Kantak, Lead of Consumer UX Research at Rocket
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Kendra Shapiro, Senior Director of Consumer Insights & UX Research at Ancestry
Susan Blank’s session, From Shelf to Table: Turning Stakeholders into Co-Creators, addresses a familiar challenge: gathering evidence is one thing; getting the organization to act on it is another.
Mike Carlon’s What 450+ Authors Taught Me About Building Products takes a different route into product development and customer understanding.
There’s also a roundtable specifically dedicated to UX + Market Research Convergence, exploring what stronger decision-making can look like as the two disciplines increasingly overlap.
If your work sits somewhere between customer understanding, product development, and organizational decision-making, you’ll find plenty of common ground here.
3. You work in research operations, or you’re scaling a lean team
If your job involves panels, tooling, process, governance, research infrastructure, or simply finding a way to accomplish more with a small team, IIEX West gives Research Operations a dedicated place in the conversation.
Research Operations (ReOps) & Scaling Lean is a hosted roundtable focused on building efficient research infrastructure with limited resources.
Democratizing Research / DIY Tools looks at how teams can broaden access to research without sacrificing quality, while The Evolving Panel & Sample Ecosystem takes on how researchers find, reach, and engage the right participants.
On stage, Janani Venkataraman, Director of Research at BILL, presents Taking Segmentation FAR: From Research to Action.
Kendra Shapiro of Ancestry joins John Provine of Voicepanel for How Ancestry Rebuilt Customer Understanding at Scale, a session that speaks as much to building the right research system as it does to the research itself.
For teams trying to scale without simply adding more people, these sessions get into the practical questions behind making that work.
4. You work in behavioral science or decision research
For people coming to insights through psychology, behavioral economics, academic research, or decision science, the agenda includes a strong thread around evidence, human behavior, and the validity of new approaches.
Byron Reeves, Chaired Professor at Stanford University, joins Leo Yeykelis of Viewpoints AI for Can You Trust a Simulated Customer? Findings from 20,000 Replications, bringing empirical evidence to one of the most debated questions in research today.
The roundtable program extends that conversation.
Behavioral Economics in Practice looks at how people actually think and make decisions. Customer Decision Making examines the forces behind consumer choice. Synthetic Insights focuses on separating useful applications from hype in non-human respondent research, while AI Ethics & Governance in Research addresses the standards and boundaries needed as AI becomes more embedded in research.
If you’re interested in what new approaches can tell us, but equally concerned with whether the evidence holds up, this is an important part of the program.
5. You own measurement, CX, or data quality
If you’re responsible for a tracker, a CX program, research quality, or the metrics leadership relies on, several IIEX West conversations are built around the questions you’re already dealing with.
Beyond NPS looks at how organizations can rethink the way they measure loyalty, advocacy, and purchase intent.
Customer Experience Design & Measurement focuses on the gap between brand promise and customer reality.
Data Quality tackles fraud, fatigue, and reliability across the research ecosystem, while Quantifying Qualitative Data explores how teams can bring qualitative work to greater scale without losing the nuance that makes it valuable.
On stage, Adrien Vermeirsch of Enlightn presents Who Really Answers Our Surveys? Meet the Survivors, taking a closer look at who is actually making it through today’s survey experience and what that means for the data we rely on.
Also on the agenda
Not every session fits neatly into a job title. A few worth highlighting across roles include:
- The Cultural Cheat Code: Spotting Change Before It Scales
Kaitlyn Rarick, Manager of Visa’s Cultural Foresight Lab - Next Level AI: Narrowing the Say-Do Gap
Vera Chien, Executive Director, Warner Bros. Discovery - From Hype to Human: A New Horizon for AI and Business
Jordana Young, Senior Product Insights Lead, Microsoft, with Julius Colwyn of Space Doctors - Attention as Foresight: From Next Word to Next World
Luca Morena, Nextatlas, with Ryslaine Moulay Peach, MAIZE - The Curious Researcher’s Guide to Social Media Insights
Esti Allegro, Kadro, with Charles Swann, Forage - Market Research in the Disability Population
Kate Kalcevich, Fable - The Moment of Inspiration: AI, Real Humans, Real Action
Julie Davitz, Plus Media Solutions
Other confirmed brand-side speakers include Kristen Griffith of The Clorox Company, Ally Sigmon of Chipotle, Natasha Gay of Microsoft, Andrew Embry of Lilly, and Sarah Ryan of Everyday Health Group.
Across the agenda, the common thread is practical: how insights teams are adapting their work, proving their value, and making better decisions as expectations, technology, and research methods continue to change.
If those are the conversations happening inside your organization, IIEX West is designed to put you in the room with people working through many of the same questions.
Speakers, participating companies, sessions, and event details were confirmed at the time of publication. All speakers, sessions, schedules, and program details are subject to change.