Populus Hires First Chief Data Officer

In the UK, full service research and strategy consultancy Populus has hired long-time YouGov exec Bernadeta Wilk for a newly created position, Chief Data Officer.

Wilk (pictured) will work across the Populus Group, which is home to full-service research and strategy consultancy Populus Limited, Populus Data Solutions, business consultancy BrandCap and recently acquired Decidedly (formerly known as FreshMinds).

She joins with a fifteen-year background across market research, consumer insight, and product and data science. For the past eleven she worked at YouGov, latterly as Global Director of Data Science, Data Products, responsible for a globally distributed team of data scientists, machine learning engineers, analysts and software developers, with the main focus on innovating and improving the firm's data products and solutions. At Populus, she will implement data architecture, data science and data strategy, while overseeing innovations in the area.

She will report directly to CEO Michael Simmonds, who comments: 'The market research landscape is changing rapidly with analytics and data science becoming increasingly more important. We have been developing our offer in this area over the last few years and the recruitment of Bernadeta will allow us to accelerate this development and ensure that we continue to deliver the critical knowledge our clients need to succeed'.

Web site: www.populus.co.uk .