Verve Strengthens Leadership with Expansion in Mind

Online MR community specialist Verve has formed a new European Executive Director team including Rich Preedy, Tim Martin, Paul Lawson and Anna Williams; and has added Ron Orgiefsky and Jon Allison to the North American team. Nick Baker has left the business for a new role.

Adrian Harper-Tee (Group MD), Emma Beech (Group SVP Operations) and Andrew Cooper (CEO) remain on both Executive Teams, and Marie Patenio remains on the North American Exec team.

Preedy and Martin take joint responsibility for leading the firm's European Research Team. Preedy has been with Verve for four years, and was previously Divisional Director in the Business & Technology team at GfK, while Martin's five years at Verve have included founding its Chicago office after a pioneering contract win with retail giant Walgreens.

Lawson has been promoted to Executive Director, responsible for new business development. He has spent eight years at the company, and prior to this spent a similar time at Synovate. Williams joins the Board to ensure Verve's qualitative, collaborative and immersion practises are fully represented. Her previous companies included Kubi Kalloo, Quadrangle, and Opinion Leader.

In North America, Orgiefsky, joins as SVP with responsibility for new business development, from Emnos USA, where he led client teams, marketing and new business pitches. Earlier in his career he worked at Market Advantage, Nielsen and Spectra Marketing. Allison has been promoted to Vice President, overseeing insights generation and helping drive further North American expansion. He was previously a Director of Advanced Analytics at Nielsen.

CEO Andrew Cooper says the team is being reshaped 'ahead of a significant expansion of our proposition which will see a strong drive for growth across Europe and North America Central to this is to recognise the talent we have developed within the business over the last ten years as well as hiring in further skills to expand the breadth of what we deliver for our clients'. He concludes: 'We see the uncertainty that Brexit brings in the European market place as an opportunity for growth - our whole business model is about helping our clients be more agile in uncertain times!'

Web site: www.addverve.com .