Haley Kiernan of Mars Petcare on AI & Data Trust

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, Karen Lynch sits down with Haley Kiernan, Insights Manager at Mars Petcare and a 2026 Greenbook Future List honoree, to explore the evolving realities of modern research. Haley shares how behavioral science shapes her approach to understanding “pet parents,” and why the infamous say-do gap continues to challenge even the most sophisticated studies.

The conversation dives deep into one of the industry’s most pressing issues: data quality in the age of AI. From bots infiltrating survey responses to the surprising rise of “too-good” open-ended answers, Haley offers a candid look at what’s changing—and what researchers can do about it. She also reflects on mentorship, feedback, and the growing role of AI as both a powerful tool and a complex unknown in the future of insights.

Key Discussion Points:

• The role of behavioral science in bridging the “say-do gap” in research
• Why traditional data quality checks are breaking down in the age of AI
• Practical strategies for improving data integrity (behavioral data, video responses, triangulation)
• The tradeoff between speed and quality in modern insights workflows
• Mentorship, feedback, and building adaptability in early-career researchers

Resources & Links:

• Mars Petcare
• Greenbook Future List
• IIEX North America Event

You can reach out to Haley Kiernan on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Haley Kiernan for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m your host, Karen Lynch. It’s such a pleasure to be here today with another of our 2026 Greenbook Future List honorees. I’m excited today to be talking to Haley Kiernan. She is an insights manager at Mars Petcare. Haley is, you know, incredible in the workplace, which we’ll talk about a little bit, but she also is active in the behavioral science community, and you know, people who are embracing behavioral science right now are really rising to the top of our field. It’s so important. She’s also mentoring students. You know, we can talk a little bit about the design challenge capstone that she’s mentoring them on. So, you know, fairly fresh in her own career, yet still giving back to others. Anyway, can’t wait to talk to you, Haley. First of all, thank you. It’s such a pleasure to have you on this podcast.

Haley: Well, very happy to be here. Thank you very much.

Karen: You’re quite welcome, quite welcome. So again, a brief introduction for me because people would really rather hear from you. Tell us a little bit about your current role at Mars Petcare and what it is you do.

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m an insight manager at Mars in our pet care division. Mars is the company that’s probably better known for making M&M’s and Snickers. We also have a pet food division, which, of course, candy and pet care are a brilliant combination and not at all confusing. So, I do work in the pet care side of things, and as an insight manager, it’s really my job to make sure my team members, such as marketing folks, people in research, people in sales, have access to and understanding of our consumers. At our pet care division, we call our consumers ‘pet parents,’ so really, there’s just a lot I manage. It could be, from day to day, projects are always changing. I’m usually managing a couple of projects at a time, it could be we’re thinking about a new cat food, and maybe we want to talk to actual cat parents, so I could be doing some qualitative work where we’re doing some focus groups to really see what people want, what they don’t want, in a cat food. It could be that we’re thinking about maybe renovating a dry dog food that we have, and maybe I’m conducting a survey, maybe I’m writing some questions, or maybe I’ve already fielded it, and I’m analyzing the data and creating a report. So, it just depends day by day on what I’m doing, but I get to talk to people about their pets, so it is a pretty good gig.

Karen: It really is. And, you know, as a pet parent, I have both a dog, and a ca—actually, right, now, I have a single dog and a single cat, but I have been a multiple cat and a multiple dog household at various times in my life. So, pet parent really just hits me because that’s really what it is. We have a special relationship with our—

Haley: Yes.

Karen: —pets.

Haley: Yes, they are our fur babies.

Karen: Yeah, they really are. Well, I said this online and via email when you were first, kind of, you know, like, in the cohort of Future List honorees for this year. It just bears repeating, congratulations again. It’s—

Haley: Thank you.

Karen: Really extraordinary. Tell me a little bit about how it felt on your end, like, first finding out you were nominated, and then, of course, finding out that you were selected.

Haley: Yeah. My boss, who I really look up to, nominated me, so of course, I was really honored and touched that she would do that. And it was funny. I turned in the application, and then kind of filed it away in my brain, and was like, “Okay, well, I’m never going to hear from them again,” you know?“That’s done.” Some of the questions, it was kind of like, oh my gosh, I don’t know. And it was just so crazy when I found out that I was actually an honoree. I think I actually thought the email was spam. We have a little button at Mars where you can report phishing, and I’m pretty sure I clicked on it to report phishing. And then, of course, the business came back to me and was like, “No, this is real,” and that’s when it kind of hit. But having listened to past podcasts with other honorees, and looking at the website and hearing all about this year’s honorees, I’m like, why me? You know, this is so crazy. Everybody’s doing really cool and amazing things, so I feel very honored and shocked to be part of this year.

Karen: Well, I think, first of all, it is not a shock to me at all. It’s not a surprise. I think that when a manager sees something in an employee who is more their junior, they do want to celebrate that. And what they see is often something that you might not have even identified about yourself yet and kind of learned about yourself as a future leader, right? So, some of the things you shared on your application that really stood out to the judges—you know, again, we talked about this mentorship, we can talk about that, but you’re already taking something like that on right, where you’re giving back to a community and I think that’s extraordinary. That is something that we look for in our Future List honorees, we the judges. You know, you already are taking a stance on data quality, which—

Haley: Sure am [laugh].

Karen: —we know it is a huge issue. We’ll talk about that today, too. And then, and also, you shared quite a bit about, you know, some of the workshop work that you’re doing. You gave us very, you know, tangible examples of some actual work you’re doing. So, it is not a surprise to us at all that you were selected. So, what do you think? Like, out of all of that, what do you think when you set aside that feeling of being, like, I don’t know. Why me? What do you think? Why do you think—

Haley: Right. Right. The imposter syndrome.

Karen: Yes, let’s set that aside. It doesn’t belong here [laugh].

Haley: I think it makes sense. I think sometimes with these types of awards, you kind of think that you’ve had to do something really big and, like, one thing, really, really well, or really amazing or really innovative, and it’s interesting to kind of take a step back and say, well, no, actually, I’ve done a lot of little things and they’re interesting, but, you know, I kind of put them aside because it was just one kind of thing. But if you kind of take a step back and say, well, actually, these little things really, really add up to maybe something that people find appealing, I think that makes sense and is interesting. And it’s a good reminder, right, for ourselves to kind of take a mental note of all the things you’ve done.

Karen: Take a mental note. What you model to others is, kind of, inspiration for how to be a leader in this field. There are lots of people that are successful at work and the work that they do, but what you have shown is also how you are going to be, again, a role model now, but a leader in the future of the industry. You’re taking a stance, you’re showing up, you’re showing up for others. You are kind of practicing what we look for, certainly, like we at an organization like Greenbook, but also, like, the judges look for in the members of our community who are really helping to elevate the entirety of the industry. You’re already doing that, so I’m thrilled that you are on the list, and I can’t wait to dig into some things. So, let’s take a step back and talk about your career journey because I think it matters. You’ve said before you’ve always been kind of curious about why humans do what they do. So, talk to us a little bit about how that played out in your career so far.

Haley: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s interesting. I think one major milestone was even figuring out that market research existed, right? You don’t grow up—at least I didn’t grow up—wanting to be a market researcher, right? I think I wanted to be a marine biologist, and took one biology class, and that was a no-go. But, you know, I majored in economics and psychology because that’s what I found interesting when I was an undergrad. But then it’s time to graduate, it’s time to get a real big girl job and I realized I didn’t want to be an economist and I didn’t want to be a psychologist, and I didn’t know what else was out there. I wasn’t in the business school, and I think maybe some business schools and marketing classes, right, you do get exposed to market research, but I feel like the average person does not. So, I feel very lucky because I went into LinkedIn Jobs or Indeed or some random job website and just kind of typed in the skills that I thought I had, and market research popped up, and there was a firm in my city and the rest is history. But I just feel so lucky, right? And I knew at that point what behavioral science was, but it didn’t seem like that was really a career, or maybe you could go on to be a professor and study these things. So, market research, you know, I had no idea what it was. And then, of course, I learned, okay, behavioral science does apply in some sense here. So, I think I was just really lucky.

Karen: Yeah, well, some might say lucky. Some might also say resourceful, right—

Haley: Yep. Yes.

Karen: —because you did say, you know, “I have these skills. How else can I use them?” That’s, you know, a little pro tip. You know, I often, when I talk to people like yourself, I often, kind of, then have a little sidebar and talk to the listeners, and I’m like, you know, pro tip if you’re in that searching space, you know, add your skills and say, what is out there that could be a good fit for me? Because that was something that you thought to do. Not everybody does that, right? And I’m glad it brought you to behavioral science. So, tell me what that felt like when you kind of met behavioral science, applied behavioral science?

Haley: Yeah, so I had been dabbling in behavioral science, right, reading some books throughout college, kind of the classics, Predictably Irrational, Thinking, Fast and Slow, that kind of stuff. And then I came into market research, and was trying to figure out, okay, how do these things mesh together? And pretty quickly, you can identify, in market research, and really just in life, that there’s a say-do gap, right? We sometimes say things and then don’t do them and don’t act on them. For example, I’m going to say I’m going to wake up early and go to the gym, and then, of course, my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. and it’s like, “No thank you. I’m going to go back to bed.” So, perfectly normal and reasonable behavior, but when you’re applying it to market research, sometimes we are asking people, and sometimes we’re making really big business bets on, hey, like, are you going to purchase this thing? What do you think? And so, I think that is where I kind of learned, okay, there might be, you know, kind of, a problem here in that people are not super great at predicting future behavior and then also remembering past behavior to some extent, right? If it’s something I do a lot or something I purchase all the time, I can probably remember that, but if you ask me what, you know, my purchase on my last trip to the grocery store, I just have no idea. So, I think I became kind of skeptical early on of those kind of behavioral things that people were just saying, “Oh, well, you know, this thing has a 75% purchase interest.” And it’s like, “Does it?” You know? “I don’t know.” And so, you learn to kind of work with that and say, okay, well, maybe it’s not exactly 75%, but how does that compare to other things we’ve tested, right, and kind of get some norms going so then you kind of have a better sense. But I’ve learned to maybe not put so much weight on those actual hard statistics. For some things. In other things, it works.

Karen: It’s so interesting because, again, as a pet parent, what’s happened to us recently—and this is a sidebar, total sidebar—we, my husband and I, have this great habit of alternating kind of who’s going to, you know, the pet store to get our pet food. We don’t have a subscription pet food. Why? Why? Why? We don’t. Anyway, so we go, we literally go to Petco whenever we run out. And inevitably, it’s, what food do we buy? And we don’t remember, and then we have to go to our phones and said, like, because we take pictures of it because we’re like, we don’t remember, so we take pictures, and then we’re sending each other pictures, and I’m like, why don’t we have our acts together? This is not a new behavior. We have been pet owners for the entirety of our marriage, which is, you know, like, approaching 30 years. So, how do we still not have this mastered? So, I think it’s interesting when you talk about that, again with my pet parent hat on, like, how do you handle that? You know, when it shows up in your research, the say-do gap? How do you handle it? Are there tips or practices that you implement? Or maybe it’s you ask a question a different way, or maybe it’s you ask a different type of a question. Like, what have you already learned to kind of counter that say-do gap?

Haley: Absolutely. And I have to remind myself all the time, I’m thinking about pet food way more than anybody else is, right? I mean, we’re obsessed with pets and pet food in this building, and people forget that. They’re like, “What do you mean people can’t remember what brand they bought?”

Karen: I know [laugh]. That’s so funny.

Haley: You know, we have—one of the things I like to use now is actual behavioral data, right? Concrete data. We have the receipts, we use purchase data a lot to find the people that we want to talk to. And without a doubt, every time you go to somebody and you say, “Hey, we have this data that says that you bought this brand,” and they’re like, “No, I didn’t. But I would remember if I did that. Like, there’s no way I did that.” And it’s like, “I have the receipts. Yes, you did.” So, it happens all the time. And I think one of the things is there another metric that’s more concrete that you can rely on, like, purchasing data, like, things like that? I think predicting future behavior, it’s what’s really tricky, right, because we don’t really have data on that. You can see what people have done in the past and try and make inferences about that, but again, it’s maybe using more norms, or, okay, how does this compare to other things that we’ve seen in the past? And how did those things do? So, you can still ask the question, I just wouldn’t take it at face value.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. The little caveat there that you know, let’s look at other data points and triangulate with that actual shopper data. Yeah. No, I—fun fact. I have literally asked at the counter before, can you please go check and what does the data tell me? Like, have I bought this before [laugh]? Is this what I’m feeding my dog? And you know, the people behind the counter look at me because I’m like, data—show me the data. Show me my own data, please. Anyway, so fun when I see myself in conversations like this. Yeah, so another thing I really wanted to get to with you is knowing that you, kind of, are looking at shopper data, and you’re looking at survey data, and, yes, you’re also doing some qualitative, you’ve got your hands in a lot of different, you know, types of data but you’ve pointed out that it’s getting a little bit harder to, you know, deal with this data quality issue, right? And like, is it a human? Is it a bot? Is this AI, or is this, you know, somebody who’s fraudulent? Like, what is happening? Even in open ends. Let’s dig into that because it’s a big issue for our industry, and I’d love your—

Haley: Yes, yeah, this has been the bane of my existence for forever as a researcher, and I feel like it’s only getting worse. There are lots of different ways in surveys and other methodologies to try and weed out bad actors, right, whether they’re bots or people that are just, kind of, rushing your survey and not paying attention, but by the time somebody is in my data set and showing up as a respondent, I think one of the things that I’ve always done is to look at their open ends because in the past, seeing what people write for themselves has been a decent way to tell, okay, this person literally, just like, jammed on their keyboard random numbers, or they’re not even talking about anything, or it looks like there’s a random book quote in here, right? It has traditionally been a pretty good way to tell who is a real, live human that is paying attention. But over the past, I don’t know, we can call it two years, give or take, I’ve seen the data quality at first got really weird, and then it got really interesting. At first I started to see responses that were almost too good. They were really long and really descriptive, and these people were saying, like, really insightful things. And having looked at who knows how many open ended responses, that’s not what you normally see, right? People are trying to rush through this. They’ve got other things to do, so you might get a couple worded answer, “Oh, I liked the cat,” or, “I liked the ingredients,” or, “Product looked good.” And these were really detailed. And so, that was kind of a red flag of, like, okay, what’s going on here? And then it started to get even harder. Responses started to get better, in the sense of, they started to look more human, right? They weren’t these really long paragraphs, they weren’t using, ‘certainly,’ and those kind of common bot words, and I ended up playing a game with my coworkers called ‘Bot or Not,’ where I would go around, and—it’s a very self-descriptive game—and show them an open-ended response and say, “Do you think this is a bot or do you think this is a human?” And in the span of a couple months, I would say, it got really tough to tell. And because that was one of my main ways as a researcher to do kind of a final quality check on the data, it’s honestly kind of scary because I have no idea anymore who is a real respondent and who isn’t.

Karen: I love the candid nature of this conversation, right, because you are on the brand side, and I have a lot of conversations with suppliers who are, you know—who have been trusted to kind of shore up data quality, but I love talking to brand-side professionals because the stakes are yours, right? They may be providing this information to you based on work that they’ve done, but you know, it is you own the final business decisions being made on this data. So, the stakes are much, much higher when there’s a data quality program—I mean problem. What I like—and I just kind of want to repeat it for the people in the back—we at our IIEX North America event last year, we actually had a group on stage play ‘Bot or Not,’ where you—

Haley: Oh fun.

Karen: —you know, they put a verbatim up on the screen, and people in the audience who are watching would determine bot or not. And so, it was fun to play in a one time thing. It was a very effective way to get people to kind of check their assumptions about whether they could recognize it or not. Not everybody could recognize the bots, right? Not everybody got it right. What I love is that you’re doing it internally, right, and it’s not a one-off thing.

Haley: Yeah, I promise I didn’t steal your game. I didn’t know.

Karen: No, no, no, I’m not saying that.

Haley: Hopefully it’s not trademarked [laugh].

Karen: No, no, no it’s not trademarked. No, no, no, not at all, not at all. And even if it was, it’s just fun. But no, what I’m saying is I’m excited that it’s being done internally, right, because that’s what’s most educational for your entire team. So, I love that it’s like a practice that you have, like, let’s take a look at these, and let’s make sure we are learning and growing because of the changes to how the verbatims are showing up. So, I think kudos to you for, you know, for gamifying something serious internally, but it’s for learning purposes. I think that’s brilliant, actually. How do people receive it when they get it wrong?

Haley: Well, we don’t know if it’s wrong. That’s the thing, right? It’s not like we, you know, made this up, and we’re doing it at a conference. That’s kind of the scary part—

Karen: Yeah, fair. That’s fair.

Haley: —is, you know, we can all come to a consensus. And some of them were easier than others, right? It’s like nobody would ever—you know that punctuation is too good. That is, like, too grammatically correct. But, you know, we can all come to a consensus, but sometimes it’s really hard. And frankly, I made up the game because I needed help, right? I’m like, I’m just one person, and you know, what do other people think? So it’s, yeah, interesting times.

Karen: Are you getting any, kind of, pushback from—this is potentially putting you on the spot, but any pushback from those above, where you’re making a case for insights, and there’s some pushback about but can we trust this information? Is that—are you getting that? Are you getting more of it? Is it about the same as it’s always been?

Haley: Yeah, so as a team, right, because at the end of the day, if the data quality is bad and it leads us in a direction to make an incorrect business decision, that’s on my team, right? We are the ones giving people the data and sure they act on it, but we’re kind of giving it our stamp of approval. So, what we’ve end up having to do is cut ties or maybe use certain providers less. A lot of the time, now we’re going more towards if somebody actually has purchase data or receipt data. I think it’s probably not impossible to fake, but at this point, I think probably it’s a little bit harder, right, to fake all your Walmart purchases or something like that. And I have seen data quality that’s certainly better with them. We’ve also turned to video open ends a lot of the time where somebody is literally just recording themselves in front of their iPhone. And you can tell sometimes people are reading an AI written response, but again, for the most part, like, you can kind of tell, right? You can hear it in their voice, you can see if their eyes are reading something or not, so we have had to make tough calls on our team, and especially because budgets are tight, and some of these things require more money, right, because it’s better data quality, so it’s tricky. But we do, at the end of the day, right, have to own it, and I think being proactive, and we’ve been very transparent with our teams on hey, things might take longer because we’re moving to this methodology because we believe it’s better, but that helps increase trust when we say, you know, we’re trying to do the best that we can.

Karen: What would you say to the those who are listening—not those of us; those who are suppliers in the industry, somewhere in the supply chain, between, you know, between sample provider to, you know, to the survey providers or focus group, you know, facilities and recruiters, all the way up to or the, you know, full service consultancies that you’ve worked with in the past, what’s your message to everybody about this issue? What do you wish the supplier side of the industry, all across that supply chain, really understood?

Haley: Yeah, I think everybody’s talking about this issue and they all come with different recommendations. And a lot of people are really good about showing what they’re doing, but we had a sample provider that was doing a ton of stuff, and at the end of the day, right, the data quality just didn’t seem right. So, I think, first all, transparency would be helpful. And saying, “Hey, we’re still working on this. We think that maybe X percent of bots are still coming through.” And how you quantify that right would be a little tricky. But I think also being open to getting feedback. I have a provider that is very open. If I see anything kind of wrong or wonky in the data, they want to know. And I think sometimes people don’t want to know, and they kind of just want to bury their head in the sand. But I feel better because we’re working on the issue together. I know they’re trying their best, I know that they know there’s a problem, and we’re trying to work through it together. I think that’s, you know, all you can do.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great advice. I hope it’s heard. I hope it lands with the right people who need to kind of think about how they’re tackling it, so thank you so much for sharing that.

Haley: Yeah, I do not envy them [laugh].

Karen: I know. I know.

Haley: It’s really tricky.

Karen: Yeah. It really is. And I think that most of us who are paying attention to this particular issue, like, we understand this is not a challenge that is easily solved.

Haley: Exactly.

Karen: But it does need… everybody to take a stance and work towards a solution. So, speaking of solutions, so you’ve mentioned, kind of, out there in the world that you know you have this playbook, that you’re developing things that you can do, or a toolkit, right? However—I’m not even sure how you refer to it internally, and I don’t want you to give away anything proprietary and everything like that, but you know, what are some tips that you could give people that they may want to consider, other brand researchers who are trying to develop some protocol around this? What are your—what can you offer as advice?

Haley: Yeah. And I think, to be transparent, the playbook is changing, right? Because one of my go to things, and it still is, but I’m not sure how much it matters anymore, is always include an open-ended question, so you can get some responses, right? And there’s always things that slip through, and always respondents that you know have to go, but right, that’s of course, getting harder, so I don’t know in the future what we’ll do to solve that. I’ll probably still always include one, at least for now, to kind of monitor things and get a gut read on that. But I think it’s when you can try and if there is actual other data out there, right, on what people have done, or maybe there’s different kinds of syndicated data or, kind of, any other data points that you can use to cross-reference things and be a little bit more sure about your data quality would be helpful.

Karen: Yeah. Even something like that, you know, even saying always include an open end, let’s make it a video open end, or something like that, like any of these action—

Haley: Exactly.

Karen: —steps, anything you can do, I think it’s worth doing, as opposed to doing nothing.

Haley: Yeah. I mean, I’ve joked about, okay, we’re going to go back to the days where we go to the grocery store, and I’ve got a clipboard, and I say, “Excuse me, ma’am, do you have five minutes to take a survey?”—but of course there’s bias in that, too. So, nothing’s perfect.

Karen: Yeah, yeah.

Haley: Nothing’s perfect.

Karen: Yeah. Well, I love what you’re doing. I love that you’re talking about it. I love that you’re kind of sharing the point of view of the brand side researcher as well, so thank you. If there’s one thing out there in this industry that you wish you could change when it comes to this issue, is there anything that’s kind of a current norm, industry norm, something in place that you wish were different, that you’d like to get out there, what would it be?

Haley: Yeah, it’s really tricky. I think this is probably the case in a lot of industries, but there has been such a push for you got to do it faster. I have to have insights by tomorrow. And I see this all the time in my job, right? We’ve got really tight timelines, and oh my gosh, we need to run a research study. What can you do in two days? And sometimes that works, and it’s fine, but I think there’s got to be a trade-off between doing things quickly and doing things well. And some things can be done quickly and well, but especially now, when you’re really having to look at your data quality, and maybe you’ve got to cross-reference another data point you have, those things just take time. And it takes time to be more certain nowadays. So, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I would love it if people said, “You know what, Haley? You can have a few more days.” [laugh].

Karen: A little bit more time.

Haley: And then I, you know, I’m working with the supplier, I can say, “You can have a few more days.” So, I think, yeah, there’s always a [cross-off 00:28:42]. If you’re doing something fast, what slips through the cracks?

Karen: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s excellent. Then there is a case for slowing down a little bit, right? There’s probably a case that people would make for, you know, higher budgets, but that’s getting harder and harder to fight for, right?

Haley: Yes. I would—always give me a higher budget, please [laugh].

Karen: Always, always, always. I want to switch gears a little bit and go back to some of the other things we talked about earlier. Because, you know, as I mentioned, as a Future List honoree, like, I love digging into something that you feel passionate about, like data, quality. It’s so, so important that we continue that conversation always. But I want to talk a little bit about some of the other things you’re doing, right? So, tell me about this mentorship program, and how you’re, you know, coaching these students in their capstone projects. Like, how did that begin and how is that going for you?

Haley: Yeah, I was lucky enough to attend a master’s program, a graduate program where at the final semester, the students get to work with an actual real life business, and we get to help them solve a problem or answer a question, and we get to actually work with people in the business and see how they do things and see what they’re thinking about. And how to apply more of what we learned in an academic sense to a real world sense because I think that’s sometimes tricky, right? Okay, I understand, I got it, I understand my textbook, but how the heck do I translate it to the real world? So, I think that was a good skill to build. And having graduated the program, they are now offering people, you can help the students, right? And you can kind of be a mentor and, kind of, show them what you would maybe do in the situation, or help them answer questions. The students are always brilliant, so I feel like I’m just kind of hanging out. I'm there if they need me. Most of the times they do not need me, but it’s a really cool experience, and I think it’s really valuable. And then it helps me too, right? I get to learn, okay, like, what are the latest things in the field, and what are you guys thinking about, and what’s going on? So, it’s been really great.

Karen: I think that is the thing about mentoring that I say all the time. I’ve been a mentor through the Women in Research program, and I learned something all the time from the people that I mentor. And sometimes it’s I’m learning from them directly, and other times it’s, you know, what? I’m going to look this up to be of service, you know? I’m going to find her a framework that she can use for the next time we meet. So, I’m doing research to help somebody else, which, of course, helps myself. And so, I think that’s, again, something that many people who don’t mentor don’t understand how valuable it is to the mentor themselves, not just the mentee.

Haley: Yes, absolutely. I realized what—I kind of had, a skill that I didn’t know I had, from mentoring, I realized it. A lot of times, especially in my role, we’re having to pivot really quickly, right? You’ve laid out a plan, you’re going down that path, and all of a sudden, something blows up, and you’ve got to pivot and think on your feet and be agile and not freak out. And when working with the students, maybe because they just haven’t done that before, or because it’s graded and there’s a lot of pressure, and these are, you know, very high achieving students wanting to do the absolute best, it’s kind of interesting watching when something goes wrong. Because something always goes wrong, right? This is for a class. They don’t actually have any money, it’s not, you know, a rigorous academic paper, which you know when things go wrong, that’s a little bit more problematic. But it’s just so funny because it’s like, “Okay, guys. It’s okay. Like, we will figure this out. Your teacher will understand if you could not find 50 small business owners with no budget in the span of a week.” And so, it’s just interesting to see in me that, oh my gosh, I actually kind of have this muscle to say, “Hey, it’s okay, let’s think of all the different ways we could pivot.” So, that’s been really fun because I think addressing and living in ambiguity is something that’s very helpful and something I’m still getting used to, but I’ve realized I’ve grown a bit from where I was.

Karen: Well, and I love that example of learning something about yourself through the process, learning a quality that you have that you might not have really even realized was a valuable skill to have until you saw it lacking in somebody else.

Haley: Exactly.

Karen: And I think that is extremely important, you know, whatever that quality may be, that self-awareness that you have there, like, oh, you know, this is valuable. This will serve me well, and I’m going to help instill it in others. So, hats off to you. I love hearing that. But it also doesn’t surprise me because you are self-aware enough to also ask for feedback, right? This is another thing I’ve learned about you. Talk to me a little bit about, kind of, how you approach getting feedback. You’re very transparent about it, and tell us more.

Haley: Yeah, feedback is really hard, but it’s also really important, right? So, I know that. And getting less than stellar feedback is never fun, right? It’s never fun for the person giving it, it’s never fun for the person receiving it, but it is what helps us grow and be better. And I think because I’m still young in my career, you know, maybe it’s easier for me to receive feedback because I know there’s things that I can still learn and work on. But what I try and remind myself is even the person that I most admire or an expert in their field, we’re all human. We could all always do something better. So, when I’m receiving feedback, it’s helpful to say, okay, I am also a human. I am also not perfect. But I think I’ve also been asked to give feedback, and that can be really stressful, too, because you’re trying to be thoughtful of the other person and aware that, oh, my gosh, am I going to offend them? Is this going to ruin our relationship? How do I say this? So, that’s always tricky. So, it’s also good to kind of realize, okay, well, the person giving me feedback is maybe also not having the best of times. And so, I think to be able to get good feedback, it’s helpful, right, to have a good relationship with somebody. Hopefully you’ve built some trust with them, and also just be candid and say, hey, I know this is probably not super fun for you, but I really do want you to be honest. And I don’t think I’ve tried this, but it is something I’ve thought about of maybe I offered to give them feedback, too, so maybe it’s kind of a two-way street. Who knows, maybe that would blow up. But I think it’s just kind of being open with that other person saying, hey, you know this is really important to me, so you know, please be honest.

Karen: Please be honest. Yeah, and I love that you started it by explaining that it’s good to get it from somebody that you trust, somebody that you trust knows you and respects you, right, so that you know they’re going to do their best to, kind of, give you feedback that is useful, right? Maybe don’t seek out feedback from somebody who you’re not sure you trust, or who doesn’t know you very well because that may not land quite so well.

Haley: Yes. Do not ask random strangers for feedback [laugh].

Karen: [laugh].

Haley: No, but you’re right, or even you know people you don’t really work with all the time, or maybe they don’t know you or—so, yes, absolutely.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it. It’s such good advice. And I think that it is never—you are never too seasoned to ask for feedback, also. You know, I think that certainly, you know, in our organization, everybody here really trusts each other, I believe, and respects each other quite a bit, so feedback would certainly be given with love and compassion and received probably similarly. So anyway, really great advice. Haley, I’m watching the clock and I want to be mindful of our time, so this is the point when I say to you, like, is there anything you wish I had asked you that we haven’t gotten into in our time together?

Haley: Well, Karen, I think you’ve done a fabulous job. No notes. The only thing I would say is I didn’t get to talk about how I am now a pet parent—

Karen: Oh, please tell us.

Haley: As of a few months ago. Yes, it’s always funny when you become the person you’ve been studying, right? It’s, like, kind of a mind trip. I’m like, what segment am I in? [laugh]. But it’s been really great. I adopted a dog. My husband and I adopted a dog a couple months ago named [Finn 00:37:39]. He’s very cute. He’s also very chaotic, but we love him very much.

Karen: Oh, I love that. Well, my cat’s name is Finnegan. We call him Finn for short, so you know, hats off to a great name. How has it been? Is this your first pet? This is not your first pet.

Haley: I grew up with dogs and ran—like, a gecko and some fish and stuff, but it is so different when you are the primary caretaker and it’s now your responsibility. And one quote that’s always stuck with me when we’ve done research before, somebody said, “My dog’s body is a temple. Mine is a garbage can, but you know, my dog is really”—[laugh] right? Because you’re responsible for this living thing, and you love them so much, and you want to give them the best. And I definitely see that in me. Finn is a picky eater, and we’ve spent a lot of money trying to figure out what he likes, and you know, really humanizing his meal experience.

Karen: It’s so funny for those of you listening, my dog is literally right behind my chair, just watching, you know what, literally watching me, eyes opening every now and then to make sure I haven’t moved from my chair. So, I think pet ownership is extraordinary. I think it teaches us something. I think it helps us stay sane. I think it, you know, soothes anxiety, it gets us outside, it you know, helps us—I mean, it helps us in so many ways just to feel needed. And I am one of those people that I have had pets for the entirety of my life. I’ve had, you know, hamsters and gerbils and guinea pigs and rabbits when I was growing up, which is funny. And then, of course, like, dogs and cats are staples for both myself and my husband. So, I can’t imagine a house without a dog and a cat. I can’t even imagine it.

Haley: I can’t go back. I can’t go back after this.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that, too. So, all right, well last question, then—

Haley: Of course. Very important.

Karen: Yeah, it’s so important. Well, and I’m sure our—Brigette, who is joining us as producer for this episode, she’s in the back and she’s listening to everything, and I’m sure she started nodding quite a bit. She is a dog lover as well. We have a lot of pets. But we’re a virtual office, so our dogs come to work with us all of the time. Does your dog go to work with you?

Haley: So, occasionally it’s when it’s only necessary. Finn is a dog who loves to play with other dogs, and in an office, we can bring our dogs to the office, and it’s wonderful and great. We even have a dog park. It’s really nice—and water stations. But Finn is a barker as well, and if he sees a dog and he doesn’t get to play with that dog, well, it’s a problem. So, we’re working on it.

Karen: Working on office etiquette. Finn, we need to work on office etiquette. We can’t bark. Oh, my gosh, God bless him. So, cute. All right, so last question, ‘The Future of Insights.’ That’s our tagline at Greenbook. We talk about it all the time. In your opinion, as a Future List honoree, somebody who was headed to a great career in this industry, what do you think the future of insights entails?

Haley: Yeah. I’m a little mad that I’m saying this because literally, everybody is saying it, so you probably know where it’s going, but I think people are talking about it because it is really important, right, and that is artificial intelligence. I think there’s long-term things that we need to think about, and then there’s also short-term things that are happening now and happening very quickly, right? Can AI be a research respondent? Should they replace research—or should they replace actual human beings? Should they be supplemental to that? Should AI be a researcher? You know, what are the pros and cons to that? So, I think, just, there’s a lot to think about with that. And personally, I’m trying to figure out—still—how I use AI and I’m still kind of in the camp of, I want to know more about the data than AI does. So, I still—if I’ve had AI look through open ends and code them for me, I still go back and read, maybe not all of them, if there’s thousands of them, right, but good set of them to understand, okay, what are people actually saying? And what are their specific words that they’ve used? Because that can be important too. And just trying to figure out, when do I use AI? When do I not? Sometimes it’s good and it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. And I also think, you know, maybe in a week, the thing that it was bad at doing it could actually be good at it. So, having to be agile and work with a lot of ambiguity, but I think it’s exciting. I also think it’s kind of scary, and I think it’s just a lot, and I feel like we’re just kind of getting hit by a truck, and that truck is AI, but it’s important to talk about.

Karen: Yeah, it is important to talk about. It is here to stay, certainly is not going anywhere, and I think we all do have to do that wrestling in our brains and that experimentation. And you know, right, now, you know, the pulse that I’m getting from the industry is that it is exactly what you said, which is, let it do some heavy lifting; use your brain also. You cannot just let it give output, and not use your own brain to either validate what it’s suggesting, or even just help you internalize it so you can become a better kind of advocate for the voice of the customer, which is really part of the job.

Haley: Exactly.

Karen: So, yeah, it is, it’s an interesting time. Well, I’m excited that you’ll be joining us at IIEX North America. You’ll be on stage. I can’t wait to learn from you in that setting, but you will also certainly learn a lot about, kind of, what’s happening with AI and, you know, we’ll all enter into the future together.

Haley: Yeah, very excited for some of the AI talks to come, so I will definitely be in attendance of those and really excited for the conference as well. I think it’s going to be great.

Karen: Yeah, I’m so thrilled you’ll be there. And I just want to say thank you so much for joining me today [laugh].

Haley: Well, thank you for having me. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Karen: Mine as well. Mine as well. So, I just also want to say, always, thank you, Brigette. Thank you to the Greenbook team for promoting these episodes, but thank you to our audio editor, Big Bad Audio. You know I appreciate what you do. Thank you so very much. And to all of our listeners, thank you for tuning in again. It’s our pleasure to deliver this to you. So, that’s it for today’s show. Until next time, everyone have a great day. Bye-bye.