Our Team

Sharon Chamberlain is the president and founder of our company, having started Chamberlain Research in 1988, and is the guiding force behind our focus group department. She has moderated more than 1000 focus groups. Clients who have worked with her praise her quick mind, her keen insight into consumer behavior, and her knack for zeroing in on the most important features of a study. They appreciate her ability to design research from their point of view and to deliver finds and recommendations that reflect their marketing needs. They also find it refreshing to work with a consultant who believes research is an investment that should pay for itself and have a positive bottom-line impact. She guides the company in upholding the ethical standards or our industry and in giving back to the community in which we thrive. Sharon Chamberlain was recently awared the prestigious Woman of Distinction Award. Shawn Brady is Chamberlain's Information Technology Director, as well as member of the Company's Finance and Management Teams. Shawn has worked for Chamberlain since 1994. Over the last 15 years Shawn has kept Chamberlain's technology up to date, and in some cases ahead of the industry curve. Shawn has a strong passion for the open source community and Chamberlain has been using Linux and other open source products for over 10 years. Over the years Shawn has worked in nearly every position at Chamberlain, from telephone interviewer, to project management, to data analyst, to bookkeeper. This gives Mr. Brady a unique perspective on the company and projects that other do not have. Shawn and his team have created many unique solutions for clients over the years including dynamic web reporting and private data portals for electronic delivery of reports. When companies need new software, Shawn is likely to invent it as a proprietary product of Chamberlain's. Perceptive and efficient, Carrie Dainty has served as Project Manager for both qualitative and quantitative research project in the areas of insurance, consumer goods, and more. Her 14 years of experience at Chamberlain have armed her with in-depth insights on the company's range of capabilities. In the past she managed mail surveys with sample sizes from a few hundred up to several thousand, including tracking returns and re-mailing to non-responders, arranged in-person data collection from regional convenience stores and large grocers for an ongoing sales audit client, and handled tabulation and formatting analytical programs. Carrie Dainty has been with Chamberlain since 1997, doubling the company's survey capacity by streamlining procedures and enhancing accuracy by establishing detailed verification procedures. Adam Jacobson, Chamberlain's Director of Research Operations, oversees Chamberlain's data collection operations and methodologies including telephone, mail, on-line, in-person and qualitative research. He is responsible for ensuring the overall quality of data collected, providing clients with the right information for making optimal business decisions. An expert on maximizing respondent participation while minimizing non-response bias, Adam has been effective in preserving the respondent pool through the better use of technology. Since 2001, he has helped Chamberlain continuously enhance touch-points to exceed clients' expectations. Mr. Jacobson is a graduate of the Edgewood College in Madison. Robb McCann provides quantitative analysis for research project at Chamberlain. Mr. McCann provides methodological insights in the design of a study, questionnaire development, data analysis, and the final research reports. Robb McCann earned a Master's of Science at Florida State University and has thirty years of experience in market research and marketing strategy. He has held management-level positions in marketing/marketing research at Fortune 500 companies ranging from consumer packaged goods and durable consumer goods to direct marketing and insurance. As Director of Business Development for Chamberlain Research, Kevin Micklitz helps companies and organizations across the country assess their strategic needs and design research essential to making effective decisions. He serves as account executive for many long-time clients, and has front-line experience in nearly everything Chamberlain does, have served on the operations side of the business for his first 6 years. His breadth and depth of experience allows him to be just as effective in working with those who have little marketing research expertise or brainstorming the fine points of methodology with seasoned statisticians. A former Marine Corps Sergeant, Kevin Micklitz has the discipline to assess his clients' needs and deliver effective results with both promptness and attention to detail. Kärre Mikkelson has been the Project Directory for scores of qualitative studies in a variety of industries. She is responsible for developing the goals and specification for the client, overseeing the budget, managing workflow among internal teams and/or with outside subcontractors, and ensuring that analysts are fully briefed on client expectations for the report and recommendations. She is an expert in recruiting hard-to-reach respondents, conducting consumer studies and product placements, managing multi-geography international studies, and has experience with qualitative projects as diverse as focus groups, in-depth interviews, mock juries, and ethnographic research. Ms. Mikkelson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Nick Olesen serves as a Senior Data Analyst for this project, responsible for ensuring the quality and accuracy of the collected data. Mr. Olesen is extremely detail-oriented and understands the importance of consistent data processing standards, especially for longitudinal tracking studies. Among many other projects, he successfully manages the data cleaning process for our largest client's ongoing customer satisfaction study. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and has been with Chamberlain since 2003. Jim Picard is Director of Business Development and Corporate Counsel. He has over 20 years of experience in the roles of in-house counsel, financial/operations management, and business development for national companies in the consumer products and distribution, banking, real estate, and insurance industries. Mr. Picard negotiates Chamberlain's contracts, engages in business development, manages the Company's sales function, and servers on the Company's Finance and Production Teams. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he earned BA and JD degrees, and has been with Chamberlain since 2008. Matt Scott is responsible for leading the programming and technical setup on the data collection for all surveys, incorporating organizational and mailing information. He ensures that surveys adhere to branding standards visually consistent with other client graphics and brand identity guidelines. Mr. Scott is also the lead programmer for our engine portal, corporate website, and custom data warehouses. Matt Scott has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and programs in C++, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, SQL, HTML, and CSS. He has been with Chamberlain since 2002. Jennifer Thelen is Director of Consulting, and works closely with clients throughout the course of a project. She oversees research studies in their entirety and ensures they are conducted on schedule and on budget. Ms. Thelen has managed scores of large- and small-scale studies with constituents, consumers, and business-to-business customers. She has great expertise in consumer behavior tracking studies as well as evaluations of advertising effectiveness, corporate brand identity, and product naming. An enthusiastic, detail-oriented executive with impressive problem-solving skills, Ms. Thelen provides clients with detailed, managerially relevant insights on interpreting and using research results. Jennifer has participated in professional seminars on survey instrument design for advanced analytical techniques since joining Chamberlain in 2001. Tony Trout is in charge of list management from the time the client database is received, through review, mailing preparation, and any phone follow-up. He checks lists for callable telephone number and appropriate quota fields, and scrubs lists by telephone number and customer ID against previous calling by Chamberlain. Mr. Trout ensures customer contact information is updated and reported to the client in a user-friendly format.

Mr. Trout has enormous breadth of experience because he has worked on a vast range of quantitative studies, and expertly managed databases for large national clients. His expertise in automating information systems and creating compatibility among divers datasets is unsurpassed. Tony Trout has served as Senior Project Director and Research Technology Director under Paco Underhill at Envirosell, and has been with Chamberlain since 2001. Tyler Walker brings over 15 years of moderating experience. In his career to date he has conducted over 500 focus groups and 1,500 in-depth-interviews with a vast array of respondents; physicians from cardiologists to rheumatologists, patients of a wide array of disease states, healthcare administrators, CEOs, and consumers from all walks of life. His healthcare and consumer package goods experience is deep, raning from research on a myriad of pharmaceutialcs through to topics as diverse as medical imaging equipments, the FDA approcal process and malpractice insurance. Mr. Walker's qualitative skills embody a wide variety of research settings, including traditional face-to-face, telephone, ethnographic and online facilitation.

For many years Mr. Walker has worked for research firms on the East Coast that specialize in the pharmaceutical industry, and he has served as the Directory of Business Development for Chamberlain Research for more than a decade. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, the Burke Institute Advanced Moderating Traning Program, and the intensive RIVA Advanced Skills Program. He has amassed over 400 hours of continuing education in various areas of market research.