Anne Knight

Anne is one of the company's most seasoned research directors. She is a highly sought-after moderator, ethnographer and data analyst with more than 20 years of research experience. While her research savvy spans gaming, healthcare, automotive, retail, entertainment, and toy & game, her "native tongue" is consumer tech. Smarty Pants clients like Honda, Microsoft, Disney, Target, Aetna and CVS love the value that Anne brings to every initiative—from client service, to methodological expertise, to analytic storytelling.

Anne has a talent for collecting insights throughout the product and marketing lifecycle. She gracefully leads exploratory and foundational initiatives, concept and prototype testing, communication evaluations, and more.

She is also incredibly adept at connecting with consumers across life stages. On any given day, you might find Anne rocking a baby while interviewing his mom at an in-home, or masterfully wrangling groups of opinionated tween boys in facilities (her favorite, in fact). Or she may be remotely chatting with British teens, hanging out with college students in dorm rooms, or slowly and carefully extracting needs from low-income seniors at a community center in rural America. Across categories and topics, consumers love sharing with Anne, and clients love learning from her.

Anne has been a market researcher her entire life. (That's a slight exaggeration, but not very far from the truth.) At age 15, she conducted paper and pencil surveys for local businesses in her hometown in southern California. She then worked her way through college hosting focus groups at Adler-Weiner's LA facility.

Anne's first post-college research position was with Philips Consumer Electronics, where she was responsible for studying consumer appetite for emerging technologies. During her five-year tenure with the electronics giant, she built an in-depth understanding of the corporate side of research. This helped to make her the empathetic partner that end-clients seek out today.