Editor’s Note: The following interview features a GreenBook Future List honoree, Timothy J. Cornelius. 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.

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Introducing Timothy J. Cornelius

Timothy was born on the banks of the Mississippi River in 2019, when he accepted his first ResTech role at Lucid, a Cint Group Company. A fire sparked within him and with it grew ideas that continue to be transformed into tangible products and services. Tim is the Director of Audience Operations at QuestionPro and Founder and CEO of P3 Technology. Under Tim’s leadership at QuestionPro, the Audience team has consistently grown >151% YOY. Tim has ideated, created, and launched many products which elevate the insights community, improve data quality, and exponentially increase the speed to insights. At P3, Tim’s solutions give a voice to those with disabilities, both physical and cognitive, in market research. Tim strives to be 1% better each day and to improve the lives of everyone he meets.

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What’s a fun fact about yourself that would surprise people to know?

I have an indoor pot-bellied pet pig named Kevin.

I’m the Wing King of Southwest Louisiana (retired).

I share the world record for the longest continuous “Cupid Shuffle”.

I acted in six major motion pictures and two television shows in my twenties.

I grow 33 of the hottest peppers in the world including some that were developed and crossbred at the International Space Station.

My dream job when I was six was to be a pizza maker.

 

If you could go back in time to when you first started your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Marry your wife sooner. She is much smarter than you and will challenge you, push you, and empower you to be the best version of yourself every day.

Beyond that, I would tell myself to “Trust your intuition and crazy ideas”. When you don’t know what to do, take the next right step forward. If you don’t know what that step is, the answer is always to help someone.

 

How did you get your start in insights? Did you know that this is what you wanted to do, or did you fall into it?

My least favorite class in college was Market Research. However, I fell face forward like a domino in a wind tunnel into insights and that turned out to be the perfect blend of my talents and experiences. While working for Gartner in Fort Myers, Florida, I got the incredible opportunity to come back home to New Orleans and join a high-growth research technology company named Lucid. Working at Lucid, I was able to witness everyday what good and bad look like from all aspects of market research – including but not limited to: coding in every platform, survey design, respondent experience, sample buying, sample supplying, respondent behavior, consumer behavior, acquiescence bias, single panel composition bias, validation errors, and thousands of types of fraud. The biggest thing I took from working at Lucid is the frequency of change in the ResTech space. When I was referred to lead QuestionPro Audience by David Butler of PureSpectrum, I was able to implement what I believe to be best practices and add gas to the fire for QuestionPro. We’ve failed, we’ve succeeded, we’ve learned, unlearned, and relearned over the last two years and grown over 150% each year. The word complacent is not in my team’s vocabulary. You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with. I’m proud and humbled to work with my team Sahil Durani, Devraj Longani, Jackson Cyril, Raj Purohit, Yatendra Singh, Alejandro Ruiz, Raul Baez, Crystal Wiese, Mark Rodricks, Luke Rodricks, and Bursain Luria.

 

What is something you’ve built or launched that you’re proud of?

I’m most proud of the company I started at The Idea Village in New Orleans, P3 Technology. P3 Technology gives a voice to those with disabilities, physical or cognitive, in research. The revenue generated is used to fund further research to make the world a more accessible and equitable place for the one in four Americans who have a disability. Beyond that, I’ve developed a sample provider, survey tool-agnostic technology named Lumen8 that circumvents the process of asking demographic questions all while checking attentiveness, increasing incidence rate, and shortening the length of interview.

 

Do you have a mentor or role model who has made a large impact on your career? If so, who? In what way did they make an impact?

My go-to mentors are the people in the Insights Community and within QuestionPro. Dan Fleetwood, President of Research QuestionPro, Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO of QuestionPro, and Vignesh Krishnan, CEO of Research Defender specifically. Dan was my first contact at QuestionPro and the reason I chose to work there over other offers. Dan thinks big, and if it’s not me taking the game-winning shot, I’d want the ball in his hands. Vivek is a no-nonsense, humble, servant leader who has developed an incredible culture of Intropreneurship at QuestionPro and sees things five steps ahead. I write Vivek a weekly update email around 11pm each Friday and by 11:01pm Vivek has cut through the noise and given me a clear direction in a sentence or two. Ten minutes in person with these two will change your life. Vignesh Krishnan is a trusted resource on all things data quality and start-ups. His company Research Defender is one everyone should have an eye on. Outside of ResTech, Corey James and the startup community within The Idea Village in New Orleans has been a key driver of the success of P3 Technology.

 

What’s next on the horizon for you? Are there areas where you’re looking to level up? A company you want to launch? A new milestone you want to reach?

Growing QuestionPro to $100,000,000 in revenue (getting close!). Continuing to improve P3 Technology’s offerings by shining a light on inequity and underrepresentation in research and methodologies.

I want to help the next thousand companies that are ready to look in the mirror and ask themselves, “Is there something I could be doing to be more inclusive?”

 

Is there a particular failure that you’ve experienced that has shaped your career and/or decisions?

Earlier in my career, I recruited a deaf respondent to a panel. (Hi Ariel!) She entered a survey and was kicked out due to a quality check based on audio from a pilot sitcom video. Closed captioning was not enabled by default and there was no replay or back button to watch again with subtitles. She lost 15 minutes of her time, making her late to pick up her children from school. That night I chatted with her for hours about what her experience has been like in life and in surveys. I was outraged by my ignorance and vowed to do my best to right that wrong. That moment was the tipping point for my obsession with conducting research on research. I found out she and others with her condition regularly don’t get to give input or get compensated for their opinion. I had to do something. I founded P3 Technology to find other groups of individuals (deaf, blind, paraplegic, autistic, parents of disabled children, low socioeconomic status, low education, unacculturated immigrants etc.) whose voices aren’t considered when companies, policymakers, healthcare providers, and others make decisions for them that affect them.