JULIA BLATNEY | Director of Operations

Julia has provided leadership and direction in project execution and management for quantitative and qualitative market research projects both domestically and internationally. Her knowledge areas include consumer durables, packaged goods, financial services, health and life insurance, medical products, leisure and travel, tobacco industry, alcoholic beverages, and telecommunications.

Julia began her career at The M/A/R/C Group, leaving in 2003 after 29 years. There, a variety of project direction and management positions in telephone and field data collection gave her a strong grassroots understanding of the research process to complement a best-practice perspective to client engagements.

Julia is currently a member of the Rockhopper Research, Inc. team providing overall project direction, consulting, and client support for all projects as the Director of Operations. Her responsibilities include direct interaction with clients and with vendors who provide services such as sample, programming, translation, data collection, data processing, and coding for both domestic and international projects.

ANDREW DELLER | IT Services Manager

Mr. Deller manages the IT Services team of Rockhopper Research. As well as being a brilliant programmer across multiple development platforms, he brings over ten years of experience in applying technology specifically as it relates to Market Research as a resource to our clients. Mr. Deller currently manages a team of multiple programmers, and functions as the lead architect for all IT related projects. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from DeVry University.

MARY SAMUELSON | Senior Research Director

Mary's primary responsibilities as a Sr. Research Manager include client service and consultation, as well as overseeing the complete execution of research projects from design through presentation of results. She has designed and implemented research in several financial services related areas including banking, credit and debit card, and loans. Mary works closely with teams to ensure client research projects under her management are properly designed to meet client objectives, and completed according to project requirements.

Mary has approximately ten years experience working directly with enterprise clients in the financial services space in developing and running programs for experience measurement at the enterprise and branch level.

With more than 18 years of research experience, Mary brings a diversified wealth of knowledge to her position at Rockhopper Research. Prior to joining Rockhopper, she was Sr. Project Director at Maritz where she designed and led research projects in such diverse areas as banking satisfaction, consumer product package design, financial services customer segmentation, disease intervention and transportation. She has managed both qualitative and quantitative research for large consumer product and pharmaceutical companies, which include branding/positioning studies, customer satisfaction, product testing, and quality of life drug testing. She is also a qualified facilitator with several years experience leading focus groups and triads, and conducting in-depth one-on-one interviews. She has implemented and managed every phase of the research process from study design to reporting and presentation.

Mary completed a B.A. in psychology at Memphis State University and a M.S. in experimental psychology at the University of Memphis. She has also completed the majority of the coursework needed for her Ph.D.

MIKE TAYLOR | Research and Technical Services Manager

Mike joined Rockhopper Research in 2008 after starting his career in market research as the Senior Project Manager and Research Director in a startup research agency in Beijing where he oversaw all market research operations for 3 years. On the Rockhopper team, Mike contributes programming skills and expertise, technical support, providing key input on project design, quality assurance and personal knowledge of the Asia Pacific region.

His international knowledge areas include automotive industry, insurance, personal electronics, advertising, consumer packaged goods, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages as well as traditional media and branding. Mike speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, is highly proficient in Japanese and has an international education composed of schooling in the United States, Japan and China in the fields of Computer Engineering and Linguistics.

Mike is currently located in Beijing, China to expand the global reach of Rockhopper Research.