Ben has spent his career in marketing starting at GreyWorldwide advertising agency. Working internationally across brands including Mars, P&G and GSK Ben gained enormous experience before moving into a more creative/planning role between their New York and London office. After Grey Ben worked at Euro RSCG before a high-profile role on the adidas and Haagen-Dazs accounts at TBWA, again working across Europe.

Caroline’s passion is turning ideas into value and making new things happen. She was Managing Partner at innovation consultancy, Synectics, where she helped people from world-class organisations to innovate, to develop their creative thinking abilities, to create high-performing teams, and to build leadership skills. She has over ten years experience in senior marketing roles in sectors that include publishing, music, video and wine. During this time, she led many successful strategic brand initiatives, which resulted in new product launches and significant sales growth.

Following the completion of a Business/Marketing Degree at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, Chris worked as a brand manager at L’Oreal and after a year, moved to London, where he began working in marketing at Sony BMG. Following his time at Sony BMG, Chris joined marketing agency Geronimo, where he project-managed an exciting array of integrated creative marketing campaigns for various clients, including Direct Line Insurance.

Colleen is passionate about exposing clients to the hidden truths and underlying motivations of their consumers. Through project management, immersion moderation and workshop facilitation, Colleen also helps clients act on those revelations. Since 2007, she has led a mix of innovation and research projects, guiding clients through insight generation, brand positioning, ideation, co-creation, concept development and concept testing, in a variety of sectors including financial services, alcohol, FMCG, travel and consumer lifestyle.

Costas is one of the founding partners of Happen and for fifteen years has worked across the globe in many areas of innovation, ranging from strategy to design to commercialisation & manufacturing. He has continuously pursued the balance between technology, consumer need and business relevance, driving for the innovative leap to achieve all three.

Dale specializes in decoding men's issues and de-mystifying men and their behaviour and is one of North America's leading authorities on men's emotional health and wellbeing. He is articulate, highly intuitive, and funny in his truth telling about what men are thinking and feeling.

Dan has spent his career working as a 'suit', come strategist, come business developer in a number of London's finest agencies. He has worked with clients such as ABN AMRO Bank, Procter & Gamble, Heinz and ICI developing integrated brand strategies, leading and winning pitches. Dan now helps spread the Happen message to attract new clients.

Dan is CEA of Happen Amsterdam. He is a recent joiner to the Happen team, having previously been a group board director of the Clear group and CEO of Clear NL.

Dan has spent his career at the forefront of consumer-led innovation and brand strategy. Having originally trained as a qualitative researcher, a restless hunt for new insights into consumer behaviour and cultural norms remains a defining quality of his approach and way of working. He has successfully led global insight, strategy and innovation projects for a hugely diverse set of clients, spanning fmcg (for clients including Colgate-Palmolive, Sara Lee and Unilever), financial services (ING and Natwest), fashion (Levi's and Dockers) and consumer electronics (Philips, LEG and Electrolux).

David has spent his career at the leading edge of insight and consumer marketing. He has published widely in the area and is a frequent conference speaker. Prior to creating Happen he was a Partner at Synectics for 8 years and Managing Director of Synectics’ European and International business for 3 years. During this time he led the development of 5 offices and created significant advances in the Synectics methodology, particularly in the area of insight-led innovation.

Diane brings with her a fresh perspective on the future leaders of tomorrow. Putting her psychology background to good use, she's focused on understanding the behaviours and motivations of Gen Y's. Through her experience, she's granted clients access to the world of the millennial through consumer immersion and insight-led innovation projects spanning beer, wine and financial services.

Diego has built his 8 years career around brand and insight-driven innovation. With an early start collaborating in the marketing launch of the Renault F1 team at the age of 20, he has since worked as brand analyst, market researcher and human-driven innovation consultant for clients such as Unilever, Vodafone, Catalonia Government, Motorola and Novartis.

Elspeth has ten years of marketing experience in the leisure industry, working client side across sport, catering, events and most recently with hotels. Having led busy departments and always pushed for creativity, she has won numerous marketing awards, culminating with ‘Young Marketer of the Year’ at the Hotel Marketing Awards in 2010.

Emma loves strategic innovation and finding the sweet spot for new ideas. She has spent the past 13 years researching, innovating and repositioning big brands for clients like The Post Office, Reckitt Benckiser, RBS, Unilever, Heinz, Danone, and Merck Serono.

She joins Happen from the Brand Consultancy Clear, where she was a Board Director. At Clear she led a large team of consultants and managed senior client relationships across a span of new brand development, innovation and brand positioning challenges.

Freddie has a Masters degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford. Coming from a background in science and research, he nurtures not only an innovative, structured and rigorous approach, but also a hunger for creativity and product development. On successfully completing his last two years of study in a single year he has demonstrated the ability to keep multiple balls in the air under the highest of pressures.

With over 12 years experience in global market research Hans is one of the true pioneers in the industry - he was amongst the first implementing online data collection on a global scale (1996-’98) and experimenting with customer dialogue marketing (2001) and co-creation techniques (2006). Initially driven by personal curiosity, Hans is an avid student of all aspects of human behaviour.

Hugh brings over 15 years of IT Strategic Leadership, having done everything from designing and implementing worldwide networks (back when that was tricky) to developing and designing websites for award-winning children's TV shows, and everything in between. From up in the air to down on his knees, Hugh brings a capacity for seeing and explaining any situation from informed multiple perspectives.

Huntley’s a regular member of the Happen team and his particular passion is working with our food clients.  He always gives people a warm welcome to the Hub and is a keen volunteer whenever there are any leftovers to be cleared up after workshops.

Huntley also has a keen nose for any new market opportunities.  He can be seen here at a recent Happen Trend Blueprinting session getting interested in how the trend for ‘pet pampering’ might play out in the future.  

His drive to make sense of consumer behaviour has always been part of Joris his DNA. After earning his degree in Marketing Management Joris' interest in 'the mind of the consumer' stimulated him to obtain a Master degree in Economic and Social Psychology as well.

Katie, aka Kates, is Happen's Finance Manager. She has always had a strong interest in the world of Finance from a young age and comes from a family of Accountants. Before joining Happen, Katie honed her finance skills at Borkowski PR agency. An honours graduate in Finance and Accountancy obtained at Bournemouth University, Katie has continued to grow and develop her skills and knowledge, continuing her studies to become an ACCA Chartered Accountant.

Lili has always had the design of great user experience at heart by continuously learning from the users in active collaborations. She strongly believes that there is always a good solution hidden behind situations that most people claim as ‘problems‘. Daring to observe and explore these situations from various angles is the key of innovation.

Co-founder of Happen, Mark has over 12 years experience in the marketing and innovation arena. Passionate about consumer insight and leveraging untapped opportunities for brands and companies. Mark has considerable experience of creating innovation programmes which deliver impact on the bottom line.

Martine launched happen in Australia in June 2008. She has been an innovation consultant for over 7 years and previously headed up the Australia and New Zealand team for an international innovation consultancy. She has extensive experience in facilitating innovation projects – encompassing consumer connections, insight programmes, ideation and implementation. She is also a highly experienced training in all these areas.

Melinda is a Partner with Happen and the founder of the North American division.  Melinda has 20+ years of experience in consumer and customer marketing and strategy, with particular expertise in customer experience, new product innovation and brand positioning.  Most recently, Melinda was President and General Managing Partner for Synecticsworld where she launched the Canadian office, spearheaded the re-branding and repositioning of the firm and grew the business significantly.

Michael has 5 years project management experience in online and offline research projects including online communities and international consumer and pharmaceutical panels. Having worked with GFK, All Global and Research Now, he is used to working on challenging briefs with team such as General Motors, Microsoft, Google, Activia, McDonalds, The BBC and PwC.

Oliver started out early as an entrepreneur; selling large shoes via the web, renovating holiday properties in France and Turkey as well as launching the site genderchecker.com, earning him coverage on CNN, The Financial Times and BBC Breakfast - all before leaving university. A recent Oxford graduate with an honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Oliver was recruited by Happen at a workshop for Twitter.com which we ran at the Said Business School.

Having previously worked at Procter & Gamble as a Marketing Manager and a Sales Team Leader, and at Nestle Rowntree as Head of Brand Marketing, his Innovation passion is the business end of bringing new products/services to market. His mantra is to always start with the end in mind, with winning consumer, shopper and retailer propositions.

After starting out working in editorial for lifestyle magazines such as Sleazenation, Sleaze, Exit and Elle, Paul moved into insights and strategy with SCB Partners in London. Over the past 6 years he has lead a variety of research, positioning and innovation projects for clients such as Coca-Cola, Topshop, Estee Lauder, Coty, BAT, SAB Miller, AMEX and Bombay Sapphire. Running brand strategy projects has taken him to over 14 international markets, while also developing a strong global network of industry experts, commentators and key brand stakeholders.

Phil is a market research professional with over 17 years experience. He has developed and led research programs in complex categories across the globe. Phil has a proven record of ensuring research findings are translated into insights and clear implications that drive brand strategy, positioning/communication and product innovations.

Phoebe graduated with an honours degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, where she founded the Quad Advertising Agency, serving as it’s first co-director. Within the first 6 months of launching, Quad delivered successful campaigns to a wide array of clients including the internationally acclaimed comedy group, the Oxford Revue.

Rikki is renowned for his lightening quick abilities as an illustrator and acute observation skills. He has worked with Happen since its birth and has helped develop a system of interactive visualization which works as a powerful catalyst for ideas and is useful at nearly every stage of a project. It is his passion for drawing and ideas that has enabled him to form a career that has spanned the creative industries and allowed him to work with many different notable brands and people.

Samantha heads up our consumer and professional recruitment’ - which means she scours the globe looking for those often hard to find people that add real value to innovation projects. She is constantly lifting rocks to identify, track down and recruit the people we most want to speak to. Once she’s found the right people, she is then instrumental in co-ordinating them and managing the associated logistics throughout a project so you can be sure that every interaction runs smoothly and successfully.

Sara thrives on working on a diverse range of challenges, usingenthusiasm, experience, curiosity and inventiveness combined with pragmatism to get the job done! It might be helping teams invent new products or defining the strategy that will drive the profitability of their business. She is a self professed information junkie, and loves being able to connect diverse goings on to advance a brand’s strategy and find insights into its consumers.

SJ joined Happen having already worked with an enviable array of clients including Coca-Cola, Aviva, KFC and Unilever both as a trainer and facilitator of insight-led innovation projects. Since joining Happen, she has been instrumental in making new things happen for a wide-range of global brands such as Ministry of Sound, Shell, and Bacardi as well as working on a number of Reckitt Benckiser brands including Cillit Bang, Dettol, Harpic and Clearasil.

Sean Stevenson is an innovator in the world of entertainment marketing. His expertise lies in creating unique marketing campaigns that connect the dots between a brand and their core consumer, sparking a valuable dialogue between the two. Sean is based out of the Manhattan, New York office of Happen NA.

Sean started his career in 1998 in New Media Operations at Island Def Jam Records where he worked with renowned music industry CEO's Lyor Cohen and Kevin Lyles, and their roster of platinum selling artists such as Jay Z, Kanye West, The Killers and Sum 41.

Suzanne is passionate about creativity and is valued for her practical and strategic innovative thinking and breakthrough insight techniques. Having started her career in fine wines, she has over 20 years experience in marketing with her last client side role as head of innovation for Nestle food.

Vanessa has a knack for discovering consumer patterns and habits across Digital and Social Media and has designed digital strategy for a number of businesses across a range of industries that include Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle, and Air Miles. Applying her background in Media Planning, she identifies competitive landscapes and consumer trends, laying the framework for insight generation.

Wayne brings a wealth of experience in Marketing, Insight, Design and Retail having spent the past 7 years in senior roles at Marks & Spencer. Prior to his arrival in the UK, he spent 10 years in various senior marketing roles working for some of the word’s largest and most respected organisations, including N.Z. Dairy Foods (Anchor), Saatchi & Saatchi and United Distillers (now Diageo). In these roles, he was responsible for brand strategy, communication, packaging, consumer promotions and NPD.

Will has over 8 years of experience working with commercially focussed creativity. His work for Happen is driven by his deep curiosity in people and exploring why we make the decisions we do; what we say we want, what we think we want and what we really want. He is passionate about designing and instigating change for a variety of brands, companies, people and places. He has a skill for working with diverse project teams and has worked with clients including M&S, Arla Foods, IAM, NHS, the Dorchester Collection and Newham Schools.