Greenbook Future List Spotlight: Natasha Ward

Editor’s Note: The following interview features a 2025 Greenbook Future List honoree, Natasha Ward. The Greenbook Future List recognizes leadership, professional growth, personal integrity, passion, and excellence in the next generation of consumer insights and marketing professionals within the first 10 years of their careers.

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Natasha Ward is an Associate Director at Acacia Avenue, driven by a passion for uncovering meaningful insights. Outside of work, she seeks activities that help her fully switch off, with climbing being a favorite. Despite being naturally risk-averse, she loves its mix of mental and physical challenge. Always open to new experiences, she’s currently trying snowboarding and has even dabbled in solo camping.

An avid fiction reader, Natasha appreciates great storytelling, especially as someone who writes extensively in her career. She advises aspiring researchers to embrace variety rather than specialize too soon. Her own path—from psychology and social research to fast-paced brand and comms work—taught her that broad exploration not only sparks unexpected interests but also strengthens research skills.

Outside of insights, what are your passions and interests?

I gravitate towards anything that helps me to properly switch off. At the moment that’s most consistently been climbing, but I like to keep things varied, so I’m trying out snowboarding this year, and have dabbled in solo camping too.

I’m naturally quite risk-averse, so I didn’t expect to enjoy climbing as much as I do – it’s totally outside of my comfort zone. What I love about it is the very necessary combination of mental and physical focus. You have to be in the moment, working out how to move from A to B, problem-solving as you go, so it’s one of the few times when my mind is entirely zoned out from everything else going on in life. Plus, there’s a big sense of achievement when you conquer a new route or find you have the confidence to do something you wouldn’t have done the week before. 

Reading isn’t the most original hobby, but it’s been a constant so far and I suspect it always will be. I wish I was the type of person who has a couple of non-fiction reads on the go at all times but I’m not; fiction writing has my heart. There’s nothing better than finding writing that effortlessly pulls you into new worlds, and, as someone who has to do a lot of writing for a living, I’m doubly appreciative of good storytelling. 

What advice do you have for folks hoping to start a career in insights?

Don’t pigeonhole yourself too early. One of my favorite things about the world of market research is the variety – categories, clients, approaches, quick disaster checks and unpicking knotty problems – there is so much to explore and familiarize yourself with, so take the time to do so. You’ll eventually find that certain areas or disciplines naturally spark more excitement than others, and it may be that the excitement comes from somewhere totally unexpected. When I first started out, I thought I’d be a social researcher. I thought, with my psychology degree and work experience in health and social care, I’d be running lengthy public consultations and evaluations and shaping policy. It turns out that I love fast paced brand and comms work and have a surprisingly keen interest in financial services. 

Exploration will also make you a better researcher. Having a broad foundation of experience and understanding to draw from will stand you in excellent stead for moving up the levels. Even if you do end up narrowing the work you do eventually, the ability to draw from different sectors, methodologies, and ways of thinking will help you see the bigger picture, integrate insights across qual and quant, and speak more confidently about the research you do yourself. 

What are three skills you believe to be crucial to succeed in market research and why?

• Curiosity – It can be a skill to maintain curiosity when you’re on your tenth interview of a project or researching a topic you know really well, but the best research comes from a place of genuine enquiry—approaching every project as an opportunity to learn something new and keeping an open mind as to what you might hear. I forget where I heard it, but I always remember the phrase ‘you can’t be judgemental while you’re being curious’ and I think it’s a really valuable piece of wisdom for researchers especially, but also very applicable to life in general.
• Authenticity – It’s a bit of a cliché, but being yourself matters. This isn’t about oversharing with clients or participants, but about putting people at ease. People respond to people, and any qualitative researcher will know that you get much more from discussions when rapport has been established early on. Whether you’re collaborating with colleagues, presenting to clients, or moderating a focus group, allowing your personality to cut through undeniably leads to more natural, more open conversations and ultimately, better research.
• Storytelling – Data is only as powerful as the way it’s communicated. Ultimately, if insights aren’t engaging or actionable, they won’t make an impact, and all of your hard work will live forever in a (probably very lovely looking) PowerPoint deck - but it won’t make it out into the real world. Good storytellers synthesise complex data, distil it down into easy to comprehend, memorable insights, and deliver those in a way that inspires and engages. It’s one of the best ways to ensure that research is turned into action.

What do you think the key characteristics or qualities of a leader are? How does this play into MRX?

Empathy is fundamental. The best leaders I’ve worked with take the time to listen—treating every opinion as valid, acknowledging different perspectives, and making people feel heard. That doesn’t mean leadership is about acting on every suggestion, but it does mean creating an environment where people feel respected and able to contribute to both thinking and culture. Those classic researcher traits—openness and curiosity—are particularly valuable here.

I also believe good leadership involves an element of (measured) risk taking and a willingness to own the outcome, even when it’s not an immediate, roaring success. Leaders move things forward, and that means being comfortable making decisions in moments of ambiguity—drawing on experience, weighing evidence, and having the confidence to take calculated leaps. And this is true of leadership in market research. It could be championing a bold insight, or backing an unconventional methodology, but there are often times when having the confidence to try out the unfamiliar leads to better or more novel insight.

If you could change one thing about insights, what would it be?

It’d be the timelines. Don’t get me wrong, I love a pacey environment, and there’s something really exciting about a quick turn around piece that’s both started and finished in a week. But there are some client problems that are really chewy and require a level of thinking that just can’t happen overnight. The type of thinking that happens in the back of your brain while you’re having a shower or out for a walk.

But often when these types of briefs come in, they don’t have a dedicated chunk of percolation time factored into the hard deadline. As we move into a time where AI begins to take on some of the more tactical research (and I do think this is the direction of travel), consultancy—and the thinking time that underpins it—will become even more critical.