Verve Hires Signal North American Push

UK-based online communities expert Verve has expanded its North American offer, with the appointments of Marlene Kohn as VP Business Development and Kristin Render as Senior Research Manager. Bogdan Bucur, Director of Operations in London, also joins the Verve Chicago team.

Marie Patenio (pictured left) leads the North American operation from the Chicago office, opened initially opened to service the needs of major client Walgreens; and was recently promoted to SVP, Research and Consulting. She comments: 'We have worked to build a strong, full-service capability for our clients in North America and have an incredibly bright research and operations team to support the work. We now look forward to rolling out our agile full-service model to clients who are not just interested in self-service or qual - rather those who are looking to partner with a fully flexible quant-qual insight team who can deliver at pace'. The company also has an office in Toronto, Canada.

Bucur worked at 360Insights & Ipsos Romania before joining Verve at the end of 2014. Kohn (pictured right) worked at Synovate (and predecessor companies) for seven years, and then at Research Assistants, Inc. for thirteen; while Render's experience includes three years at Millward Brown and one at LRW.

Verve, which has rounded out its communities offering with broader research expertise and says it offers 'a partial to (very) full service approach', launched a dedicated Innovation practice in July.

Web site: www.addverve.com .