team

Douglas Rivers, Ph.D., President and CEO

Len Cardone, Vice President of Finance

Lawrence Choi, Principal of Marketing Insights

Andy Cross, Managing Director of Marketing Insights

Michel Floyd, Sc.D., Chief Technology Officer

Samantha Luks, Ph.D., Vice President of Special Projects
Ted Marzilli, SVP and Managing Director BrandIndex

Jeffrey Stewart, Vice President of Operations

Brian Stults, Senior Vice President of Operations

Jamie Turner, Vice President of Information Services

Lynn Vavreck, Ph.D., Consultant, Cooperative Congressional Election Study

 

 

Douglas Rivers, Ph.D.
President and CEO

Douglas Rivers is one of the world’s leading experts on survey research and a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He has taught at Harvard University, Caltech, UCLA, and, most recently, Stanford University, where he is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Rivers has founded two successful technology companies, Preview Systems and Knowledge Networks. Preview Systems pioneered the field of digital rights management, conducted a successful IPO in 1999, and was sold to Aladdin in 2001. Knowledge Networks introduced probability sampling to the Internet in 1998 and is currently ranked as the 25th largest market research company in the U.S. according to the AMA Marketing News. Rivers was CEO of Knowledge Networks from 1998 to 2002. He was named Executive of the Year in 2000 by Research Business Report and awarded the Innovator's Award by the American Association of Public Opinion Research in 2001 in recognition for his work at Knowledge Networks.

He also is a consultant to CBS News and has published numerous academic papers in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Econometrics Journal, the Journal of Econometrics, and the American Economics Review. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

 

 

len cardone
Vice President of Finance

Len Cardone leads the finance organization where he is responsible for planning YouGov Polimetrix’s financial strategies and managing its overall financial health. 

He brings more than seventeen years experience leading finance organizations in technology companies, including Compaq Computers, Nortel Networks, ATMI and most recently Knova Software, where he served as Director of FP&A. 

 

He earned a B.S. in Economics with a concentration in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University.

 

 

LAWRENCE CHOI
Principal of Marketing Insights

Lawrence Choi has worked with leading consumer technology, financial services, professional service firms, and pharmaceutical companies worldwide in optimizing new product development, brand strategy, customer acquisition/retention, and pricing.  Prior to co-founding Clear Horizons in 2003, Lawrence was a Director at Rosetta Marketing Strategies Group responsible for leading multinational projects and developing proprietary modeling techniques.  He holds 4 patents for analytics and methods in marketing and has published articles in Pharmaceutical Executive, Journal of Refractive Surgery, and American Banker. Lawrence graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University.

 

 

ANDY CROSS
Managing Director of Marketing Insights

Andy Cross is a  30 + year sales, marketing, and research veteran with a resume that covers tenure at Young & Rubicam (1978 to 1980), Pepsi-Cola – Vice President Marketing/Business Unit Manager (1982 to 1994), Nabisco – Senior VP Sales & Marketing (1994 to 1996), CMO of MobileComm Communications (the nation’s largest wireless paging carrier – 1996 to 1998), CEO of Franklin Electronic Publishers (NYSE – traded), a Founder of Rosetta Marketing Strategies and head of its Technology Practice (2000 to 2003), and Founder of Clear Horizons (2003 – 2009).  Andy is a graduate of Colgate University (1978) and the Wharton School (1982).

 

 

Michel floyd, Sc.D.
Chief Technology Officer

Michel Floyd is responsible for providing technology leadership to YouGov plc group worldwide. His portfolio includes application development, IT, global voice and data networks, and all aspects of YouGov’s online experience for clients, employees, and respondents.

Michel Floyd has been a Silicon Valley technology leader for over 22 years, having served at the director through EVP levels in both early stage start-ups and public companies, including Knowledge Networks; Preview Systems (IPO then acquired by Aladdin Systems); Optimal Networks (acquired by Compuware); Systems and Networks (acquired by Cadence Design Systems); Xsoft (now Inxight); and Integrated Systems, Inc. (IPO then acquired by Wind River Systems). As an expert in distributed computing, high availability Web applications, e-commerce, networking, and enterprise software, he is occasionally called upon perform technology due diligence for investors and others in support of financings, acquisitions, and partnerships.

Dr. Floyd holds B.S., M.S., and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Aeronautics and Astronautics, as well as a U.S. Patent on e-commerce security, with several more pending. Michel is on the board of directors of the MIT/Stanford Venture Laboratory VLAB and serves as its web-chair.

 

Samantha Luks, Ph.D.
Vice President of Special Projects

Samantha Luks studies a wide range of topics in political behavior and political psychology. She has published articles on presidential elections, African American partisanship, trust in government, attitudinal ambivalence, and welfare dynamics and her work can be found in outlets such as Political Psychology and Presidential Studies Quarterly.

Additionally, she has collected extensive data on voting technology and elections over time and has developed techniques for analyzing administrative data and records. Luks previously held an appointment at the University of Minnesota. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences from Northwestern University.

 

Ted Marzilli
SVP and Managing Director BrandIndex

Ted Marzilli leads the BrandIndex global business unit. Ted's responsibilities include the sales, marketing and ongoing product development of the global BrandIndex service, the first daily brand intelligence service measuring the brand equity of thousands of major commercial brands across dozens of industry sectors. He brings more than 15 years of experience in the market research, media and CPG industries to Polimetrix.

Ted was most recently Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at The Nielsen Company, the world's largest market research company, operating in over 100 countries. At Nielsen, he developed global strategy and launched innovative services related to loyalty marketing, in-store media and the financial services industry. He also led numerous partnership, joint venture and acquisition efforts, both domestically and internationally. These included businesses focused on retail measurement, pricing and promotion software, shopper tracking and marketing mix modeling.

Prior to Nielsen, Ted was a senior associate in the New York office of Booz | Allen | Hamilton. While at Booz | Allen, he consulted to senior executives of major media companies, including Universal Studios, EMI, MTV, Reuters, EM.TV and Primedia. Ted's areas of expertise include pricing strategy, mergers and acquisitions, the Internet, Hispanic market opportunities, television and movie studio operations, print distribution and content development.

Ted earned an MBA, with honors, in Finance and Management from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He also earned a BA, magna cum laude, in Economics and Philosophy, from Boston College. Ted has served on the board of directors of innovative market research companies, such as GuestMetrics and The Luxury Goods Intelligence Network, and has also served on the Alumni Council at the Stern School of Business.

Jeffrey Stewart
Vice President of Operations

Jeff Stewart joins YouGov with more than nine years of online market research experience.  Prior to joining the company he worked at MarketTools, Inc as a director in sampling, panel management, and product development.

 

He now directs YouGov’s operations group which is responsible for executing key aspects of online research – programming, fielding, sampling, and panel management.

 

Jeff earned a Masters in Business Administration from University of San Francisco and a BA from Fairfield University, in Fairfield, CT.

 

brian Stults
Senior Vice President of Operations

Brian Stults joins Polimetrix after several years working with non-profit organizations. Most recently, he was National Voter File Director for one of the largest get-out-the-vote drives in history. In this capacity, he constructed voter files and managed data processes for fifteen states.

Prior to working with non-profits, Stults independently constructed voter files and performed database enhancement work for clients including various state parties and candidates. Stults holds two summa cum laude degrees from Dartmouth College, one in Quantitative Political Analysis and the other in Mathematical Social Sciences.

His Honors Thesis research on economic voting won the College's prize for best piece of research written by an undergraduate 2001. Stults' research has been presented at professional conferences and is under consideration at various peer-reviewed journals.

 

 

Jamie turner
Vice President of Information Services

Jamie Turner leads the team that develops software and provides infrastructure to support YouGov Polimetrix's ambitious technical goals.

He has been designing Internet-based software for more than ten years, spanning such diverse fields as video games, peer-to-peer networks, CRMs, and online mortgage-processing systems. His contributions to open source software have been used by thousands of individuals, universities, companies, and state departments. His areas of expertise include distributed systems and cluster management, multiprocessing with asynchronous message-passing, and web framework design.

Jamie studied Computer Science and English at UCLA before dropping out to accept a position in a software consultancy.

 

 

Lynn Vavreck, Ph.D.
Consultant, Cooperative Congressional Election Study

Lynn Vavreck studies campaigns and elections and has read every campaign stump speech, advertisement, and leading newspaper article about each election since 1952. She comes from a background in practical politics, starting her career as a Media Advance Representative for The White House in 1991 and did the same during the 1992 presidential campaign.

During her tenure as an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College, Vavreck studied the nation's first primary, appearing on numerous radio and television programs discussing her research on "retail politics" and why it works. Now a professor at UCLA, Vavreck is researching the effectiveness of political advertising on cable television.

Her work can be read in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and in Campaign Reform: Insights and Evidence (University of Michigan 2000). Vavreck holds a B.S. and an M.A. from Arizona State University and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.