Greenbook Future List Spotlight: Belinda Brown

Editor’s Note: The following interview features a 2024 Greenbook Future List honoree, Belinda Brown. 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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Belinda Brown, renowned as the Director of Marketing and Business Development at Gazelle Global Research Services, is fervently dedicated to advancing epresentation/research in women's health. Her advocacy stems from personal encounters, notably her journey with a PCOS diagnosis, igniting a passion to unearth healthcare system inadequacies concerning women's well-being.

Belinda's steadfast commitment to fostering inclusivity and championing improved representation is not only evident in her current role but also evident in her affiliations with esteemed organizations such as the Insights Association and Market Research Education Foundation. These engagements have empowered her to amplify women's voices and advocate for more nuanced research approaches in healthcare.

Leveraging her diverse clinical background and resolute focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I) in Market Research, Belinda emphasizes the critical need for a transformative shift towards prioritizing women's health in research initiatives and healthcare provisions. Her narrative underscores the vital importance of acknowledging and rectifying gender imbalances and distinct health requirements in the realm of medical research and healthcare services.

Outside of insights, what are your passions and interests?

As I landed in insights much by accident, I gathered several passions and interests in half-baked career paths that I am happy to still engage with. In 2016, following some existential dread at the state of of the world and a yearning to be in female spaces generating something good, I trained to be a birth doula.

Birth work, and maternal-fetal health have always been, and remain incredibly important to me. I enjoy taking part in advocacy work and activism in this space, as well as in LGBTQ issues, racial injustice and inequity more broadly. For many years, I worked with the disabled population in Westchester County, NY in early intervention services and child welfare programs and this remains a passion of mine. I also love to cook and am very passionate about small-batch farming and sustainable agriculture. 

What is the most valuable lesson you have learned from market research?

The most valuable lesson I've learned from market research is that each of us possesses the power to change the world. Decisions made by world leaders, by governing bodies, by executives in corner offices, are bolstered by the opinions of ordinary people. It's why we harp on data quality, representation, and properly compensating participants.

Their voices matter. They should be handled with importance. Insights provides a privileged vantage point from which we can observe the nuances of change. We know what lead to the decision to change the packaging of a particular product. We know why a media outlet reports poll data in a way that serves their agenda. The work matters. It changes the world.  

What advice do you have for folks hoping to start a career in insights?

I was having this discussion with an educator recently. I think that the careers presented as options to kids are still really lacking. I remember career days in elementary school. Parents would come in and try to sell you on being a lawyer, a doctor. Maybe you'd have a wild card in the mix-- someone's Mom was an sculptor or made violins. Unless my Mom showed up that day, I certainly never had anyone express to me that Market Research was an option. Granted, it's a tough sell.

It's not as sexy as the violin maker or the guy who cuts people open for a living. All of this to say-- I think anyone interested in insights should know that there are so many avenues to take. It's such a rich industry, there is opportunity for different learning styles, different strengths, different aversions. You don't have to love statistics to love what statistics affords us. Soak up as many parts of the industry you can. There's something here for everyone. 

What do you think the key characteristics or qualities of a leader are? How does this play into MRX?

A mentor recently relayed something her father always taught her. I hope she'll forgive the paraphrase but essentially if you've assembled a room of people and you're the smartest one in the room, you've already failed. My mother echoes this notion. Always take the best idea in the room--from whomever it comes. I think being a leader requires that you're someone who's still willing to learn. I listened to an episode of Armchair Expert recently with the incredible musician Jon Batiste. \

He was talking about his band, and how they would regularly start the day with the idea that they needed to go get their rejection out of the way. It was coming for them regardless, so they might as well attack it head on and get it out of the way. I think a leader needs to know how to fail. To fail with integrity, and allow people they lead to witness both the failure, the humility, and the redemption. This same mentor reminded me recently that people rarely remember a problem. They remember how you were able to fix it.