Editor’s Note: The following interview features a GreenBook Future List honoree, Dana Kim. The GreenBook Future List recognizes leadership, professional growth, personal integrity, passion, and excellence in the next generation of consumer insights and marketing professionals within the first 10 years of their careers.
Introducing Dana Kim
Dana is the Founder and CEO of Highlight, an agile in-home product testing platform. Dana spent five years at a boutique insights agency as a qualitative and mixed-method researcher for years, where she saw firsthand the difficulty of product testing. Determined to build a solution, Dana then got her M.B.A. at The Wharton School, where she built Highlight: a high-growth research tech startup disrupting the in-home usage test and physical product research space. Highlight’s platform streamlines everything from recruitment to data set, including all the logistics of getting your product to your target customers. It boasts 90% survey completion rates, can get product into hands in days, and seamlessly collects targeted feedback at scale.
Since starting your career in market research, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?
This is an easy one – building the team at Highlight with my co-founder Ethan. Above all the customers landed, dollars raised, features launched, or revenue booked, we are most proud of our people. Our greatest accomplishment is bringing this amazing group together, working hard in honor of our mission to build better products, and having fun doing it.
If you could go back in time to when you first started your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?
I’d say to be more confident, and even if you’re not more confident, to engender and portray more confidence. We’re all our own worst critics, and my admittedly Type A personality and perfectionism have sometimes gotten in my own way. I can’t pinpoint anything I did particularly wrong in my early career, but I also can’t pinpoint too many times when I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone, took initiative, and seized real ownership in my work beyond the job description. Confidence catalyzes risk-taking, and I would’ve encouraged my past self to take more (intelligent) risks to push the boundaries of my ‘day job’.
What do you consider to be key characteristics or qualities of a leader? How does this play into market research?
Normally, for a strong leader, I’d say things like confidence, resilience, diligence…but especially as it relates to market research, my answer varies: storytelling and empathy. My first job in market research was at Kelton – a firm that built me into the researcher I am today, showing me the ropes of first quant, then qual, then mixed methodology work. But far beyond research mechanics, what I learned most (and Kelton’s key differentiator) was the importance of storytelling. Our founders Tom Bernthal and Gareth Schweitzer were former journalists, and they instilled humanity, empathy, and storytelling in not only the research process, but in how the business was run, and how the people were treated. Now more than ever, I realize the importance of good storytelling and building empathy as it relates to leadership – grooming that quality has helped me recruit talent to grow our awesome team at Highlight, raise money from institutional, strategic, and angel investors, sell prospects who are now loyal clients, build partnerships to strengthen our business…the list goes on. (Thanks Tom and Gareth! I think this is the first time I’ve called them out in name since starting Highlight.)
If you could change one thing about the insights industry, what would it be?
Somehow, I look around, and most folks in insights have somehow ‘fallen into’ or ‘stumbled upon’ the insights industry unknowingly – including myself! For an industry that underpins everything we see, purchase, do, know, and understand, there should be a much more intentional and aspirational track to a thriving market research career. I’d love to change that dynamic and increase awareness of and elevate the ‘brand’ of the insights industry. This year, I’ve joined ESOMAR as a US Representative with a special focus on YES (Young ESOMAR society) for exactly that reason. If this is a topic you’re also passionate about, let’s talk!
If you had $1M to invest in various parts of the industry, who or what would you invest in? (You can split the amount as you see fit!)
Another easy one! I’d invest it in my co-founder Ethan Kellough. He’s the smartest person I know. He doesn’t come from market research in the way that I do, but he’s gotten so smart on the space in an astonishingly short period of time, and he’s going to change it for the better. (Hopefully with me!)
