Pankaj Kumar, PhD

I started out as a mechanical engineer -dealing with machines and, by definition, focusing entirely on producing tangible and practical results. Machines were fun, but a certain wanderlust prompted me to explore the business side of things; to Marketing, and to dealing with people and uncertainty.

It was challenging and refreshing to seek the same practical solutions in a field that was largely about intangibles, and as luck would have it my doctoral timing coincided with an explosion in the availability of customer data and advancements in data and technology infrastructures. One-to-one marketing and technology-driven data mining solutions drove strategic marketing, but their focus was on the “what’s” of consumer behavior. My doctoral training focused on building advanced analytical models to explain why consumers do what they do.

I found myself teaching in business schools, exploring the field of quantitative marketing. Here I came to understand marketing problems in depth, and to appreciate how important it was to distill complex findings into easily understood learnings.

Fueled by this experience I entered consulting, and worked on a host of practical business problems – in each case helping clients get the “why” behind the “what”. I came to realize the importance of a different kind of analytic consulting model – one that brings together the advances in academic research and the rigor needed to produce practical, implementable solutions.

Prior Professional Experience: Merkle Inc., Millward Brown Optimor, IMS Health, Cornell University, City University of New York

Education: Ph.D. – Marketing, State University of New York, B.E. Mechanical Engineering – India