Greenbook Future List Spotlight: Joyce Chuinkam

Editor’s Note: The following interview features a 2024 Greenbook Future List honoree, Joyce Chuinkam. 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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Joyce Chuinkam, Senior Research Manager at Talk Shoppe, is a market researcher dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized individuals, ensuring they are not overlooked. By including these perspectives in research, Joyce shapes how companies incorporate them into their overall narrative, fostering inclusivity and belonging. Her focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) stems from personal experiences, driving her to humanize businesses' customer base with empathy. Serving as a connection between corporations and consumers, Joyce takes pride in her role.

At Talk Shoppe, Joyce brings a wealth of leadership experience garnered from conducting research across diverse sectors such as Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), food service, technology, and social media. Her passion lies in translating consumer insights into actionable data, benefiting some of the foremost global brands, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Kimberly Clark, Coca-Cola, Pandora, Disney, and Tamagotchi. Her impressive educational background includes a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Penn State University, studies in Politics Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University, an MSc in Global Media from the London School of Economics (LSE), and an M.A. in Global Communications from the University of Southern California.

Joyce's unwavering commitment to amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities within the market research industry is truly admirable. Her dedication to ensuring inclusivity and representation sets her apart as a leader in the field, making a significant impact on both the industry and beyond.

Outside of insights, what are your passions and interests?

I got into rugby and bodybuilding after college and quickly became passionate about health and fitness ever since. The two sports are starkly different, but share a lot of the same criteria for success such as discipline and endurance. What I love about rugby is the camaraderie. Being a part of a united team where no one points the finger when we lose because we all have a burning desire to win changed my outlook on collaborating with others. I love being on a winning team, but more importantly, I love being on a team that puts in strategized effort.

And then there was bodybuilding - a solo sport, where your mind and body don’t always see eye-to-eye. I love how it demands a new level of mental training to keep pushing when there might not be teammates or coaches to motivate you on the day-to-day. In many ways, my two passions trained me for the corporate world, and heavily influenced my outlook on life. There’s no better feeling than working hard on a project, producing great work, and watching the client thrilled by the insights and how they can be leveraged internally.

Since starting your career in MRX, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

My greatest accomplishment has been the research I independently conducted for TalkShoppe getting quoted by the New York Post and the BBC. What was so great about it was that the topic is poignant and resonates with so many adults who are struggling to forge deep connections and make friends. There's a loneliness epidemic that existed before the pandemic and has only been exacerbated ever since and I’m grateful to Talk Shoppe for seeing the value in such research because, at the time it was conducted, it felt like a topic that was not being discussed enough.

I felt accomplished in navigating that conversation with focus group respondents in a way that was respectful and sensitive to their insecurities. Loneliness is not an easy topic to talk about, especially in a room full of strangers! I felt very accomplished when my colleagues expressed interest in the topic as well and helped revise and improve the final draft of the insights which we converted to a Talk Shoppe blog post. Though recognition from the New York Post and the BBC were major (and exciting) accomplishments, knowing it was a labor of love that a team of Talk Shoppers got behind is what warms my heart.

When did you know you wanted to enter a career in insights, and what inspired you?

‘You mean to tell me I’ll get paid to travel, talk to new people, AND jump to conclusions from what they are saying? Sign me up, I was born for this!’ Jokes aside, when I learned of what market research was through my USC dissertation supervisor, Susan Resnick West, PhD, I was eager to learn more. I had worked with her at the Annenberg Innovation Lab for a major media company and couldn’t believe people got to do that type of work full-time. 

I loved that we got to talk to people, analyze patterns and themes in their responses and then collaborate with the client team as peers to strategize the best path forward. As someone who changed cities every 2-3 years of her adult life at that point, the notion that the project/client would change every 2-3 months was also appealing. As I figured out life in my early 20’s, I wanted variety and newness to identify what my interests truly were. I’m pleased to say that years later, my love for insights has only grown deeper because there’s always something new to learn. Even if an idea does not seem new, it can always be built upon and that’s what I get to do!

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

It might sound obvious, but I’ve learned that there’s more that connects us than separates us. I’ve learned this from the projects I’ve worked on and the people I've worked with. 

Since George Floyd's murder in 2020, many companies have taken an interest in multicultural marketing. I’ve learned from these projects that because no one cultural group is a monolith and identities compound on themselves to make an individual, most people do not care to see ‘Black’ ads per se. What many people want is to see a representation of their realities and their realities aren’t black or white; they’re mixed in race, gender, sexuality, ability, and heritage. Great marketing reflects a world in which consumers can see themselves.

On the other side of good research is great people. I’ve learned from my colleagues, clients, and even respondents the valuable lesson of being human first. As a recovering perfectionist, it hasn’t always been easy to give grace when things are a little of schedule; respondents run late for an interview, a client forgets a call, a colleague didn’t make as much progress on a draft as they had hoped or a deadline completely slips my mind. It’s impossible to be in qualitative market research without empathy (for self and others) and I continue to tap into it more each day on the job!

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

A leader is a visionary, a student, and the hardest (smartest) working person in the room. A leader skates to where the puck will be, rather than where it is now. To do this, a leader stays tapped into the market patterns and trends, hence forever a student. Learning about what employees need, learning about where the industry is going, how to get ahead of it, and how to support their team during the process. Market research requires these same leadership qualities. One of our qualitative team Senior Directors, Rachel Licata, embodies this by anticipating client’s needs, based on her years of experience, and communicating to the project team how we can work together to have those needs met before they ask. One of the many reasons I love working with her, and many at Talk Shoppe, is because seeing them in their element inspires me to be a better leader.

What challenges do you see facing newer MRX professionals as technology advances?

I think newer MRX professionals might be a bit apprehensive about stepping into the industry because they had a vision of it as it’s always been and the shifts happening make the space feel daunting and unfamiliar. As with all change and new experiences, there will be growing pains. Right now, AI is making its way into every pocket of the industry and it can be scary and confusing but it also could be revolutionary and incredibly helpful for us. It’s our role as researchers to embrace the technology (which isn’t going anywhere) and leverage it to meet our needs more effectively than we’ve done in the past. It’s our role not to fear change but rather approach it with optimistic curiosity. Perhaps it will result in you spending more time with loved ones, or knocking out more projects in a shorter period of time. Either way, you won’t know till you explore it and take from it what serves you.