YCCI leadership comprises award-winning faculty members and staff with an impressive depth and breadth of customer insights experience.
Our team works together seamlessly to continue to advance the frontiers of evolving customer behavior.
Ravi Dhar
George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing, Yale School of Management; Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, Yale University; Director, Center for Customer Insights
Professor Dhar has been involved in pioneering work in understanding the different factors that influence how consumers think and decide. He has also served as a consultant to dozens of Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of industries, including CPG, health care, high tech, financial services and luxury goods on developing best practices for generating and using customer insights.
Ravi has published more than 75 articles and serves on the editorial boards of several of the leading marketing journals. His research and teaching has been honored with various awards including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Management, and the Yale School of Management Alumni Association Teaching Award. His work has been frequently mentioned in Business Week, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, and other popular media.
K. Sudhir
James L. Frank Professor of Private Enterprise and Management, Yale School of Management; Director, China India Insights Program
Professor Sudhir’s research focuses on gaining market insights by analyzing consumer and firm actions through econometric modeling. He is currently focused on research on consumers in emerging markets. He has consulted for Fortune 500 firms across many industries, including technology, financial services, entertainment and retailing. Professor Sudhir specializes in analyzing firms’ internal data to obtain actionable market insights.
His research has been honored with numerous awards across all major quantitative marketing journals. He received the Bass Award from Marketing Science and the Lehmann Award from the Journal of Marketing Research; he has honorable mentions for the Wittink Award in Quantitative Marketing and Economics, and the Best Paper Award from the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
Professor Sudhir has also been a finalist for the John D.C. Little Award from the Marketing Science and the Paul E. Green Award from the Journal of Marketing Research. He serves on the editorial boards of all the leading quantitative marketing journals: Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.
Nathan Novemsky
Professor of Marketing, Yale School of Management; Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, Yale University
Professor Novemsky is Professor of Marketing at the Yale School of Management and has an appointment as Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. As part of the YCCI, he actively partners with practitioners to develop new insights into customer behavior that are both relevant to practitioners and new to the academic literature.
He is an expert in the psychology of judgment and decision-making, an area that overlaps heavily with behavioral economics and consumer behavior. His research examines how people know what they like, how the ways in which they frame decisions affect the choices they make, and how their goals influence their behavior, among other topics.
Jennie Liu
Executive Director, Center for Customer Insights; Lecturer in the Practice of Management
Jennie brings to the YCCI experience in marketing, brand building, and harnessing customer empathy and experience to drive strategic innovation.
Prior to her role at Yale, Jennie was the Executive Director of North America Marketing at The Estée Lauder Companies, leading initiatives for the Clinique brand with retailer-specific strategies and omni-channel programming development for some of the brand’s fastest growing retail partners in North America.
During her time with Clinique, Jennie was a champion for the brand’s expansion into open service shopping environments such as Ulta and Sephora, where she worked on both in-store and digital programs. She led initiatives that established pipelines of innovation for impulse and retailer-exclusive promotions, and brought new ways of thinking about the retailer as a customer, which included targeted programs for highly influential sales team members, such as the Sephora Pro Team and Nordstrom Beauty Stylists. Jennie also worked to expand Clinique’s presence in several retailer loyalty programs, and was a driving force behind the launch of Clinique’s first offering for high-value Sephora consumers.
In addition to her marketing experience, Jennie has worked in Hong Kong in business development as well as in corporate finance. Jennie received her MBA from the Yale School of Management and BA from Vanderbilt University. She was the winner of both the McKinsey Net Impact Case Competition and the Y50K For-Profit business plan competition during her time at Yale.
Treeny Ahmed
Executive Director, Center for Customer Insights; Lecturer in the Practice of Management
Treeny joins the Yale Center for Customer Insights with over 15 years of experience in strategy, brand building, and successfully launching new products at Fortune 500 retail and franchise companies.
Prior to her role at Yale, Treeny was the Senior Director of Marketing at Edible Arrangements where she led national and local marketing efforts across 1200 stores. She headed Edible’s brand transformation from a Gifting heritage company to a Gifts and Treats brand. She spearheaded their retail channel growth strategy by segmenting store groups and creating specialized tools for each segment, driving increased sales and profitability. While at Edible she also developed the marketing launch plan for a new line of immediate consumption products that are sold across the Edible footprint of stores today.
Her prior experiences include leading an innovative media campaign that was profiled in the New York Times for a leading chain of convenience stores, and the relaunch of Bath & Body Works’ Home Fragrance business. Prior to business school, she worked as an investment banker in the technology group at Morgan Stanley.
Treeny grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, and speaks 5 languages. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School and an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University where she was a member of the Radcliffe Pitches and the Hasty Pudding Club.
Dan Blanchard
Senior Associate Director, Center for Customer Insights
Dan Blanchard serves as the Associate Director of Research at the Yale Center for Customer Insights, where he is responsible for a wide array of initiatives, including managing a portfolio of strategic partnerships and insights research programs. Dan crafts the Center’s quantitative/qualitative research solutions, and synthesizes consumer behavioral insights from a multitude of sources to provide our partners with actionable recommendations.
Prior to joining the YCCI, Dan worked in the Publicity Department of Yale University Press, where he contributed to hundreds of book projects and landed placements in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Review of Books. Most recently, he supported the Center for Customer Insights as an Assistant Director.
Dan graduated magna cum laude from Quinnipiac University in 2010, where he received a B.A. in Public Relations.
Victoria Ambrozaitis
Senior Associate Director of Digital Marketing, Center for Customer Insights
Victoria joins the team with a mission to amplify the collaborative work of academics and industry leaders at YCCI.
Victoria comes to Yale with over a decade of experience in advertising, marketing, and brand management. She has worked both agency and brand side, spending a majority of her career at Subway responsible for the creative development of broadcast TV, audio, and ultimately leading the brand’s paid and organic social. Agency side, she owned the client relationship for e-commerce content development for all Kraft Heinz brands in the US and Canada, working with major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
In her capacity at YCCI, Victoria will spearhead the center’s digital marketing initiatives, elevating the marketing faculty's thought leadership through strategic digital channels.
Victoria graduated magna cum laude from the University of Connecticut with a B.A. in Communications.
Jenna Kalkwarf
Associate Director of Events, Center for Customer Insights
Jenna Kalkwarf serves as the Associate Director of Events at the Yale Center for Customer Insights (YCCI) where her mission is to execute the center’s programming.
Jenna comes to Yale with close to a decade of experience in event management and engaging and building communities in both academia and for corporations. Spending a majority of her career at Washington University in St. Louis, Jenna led the planning and execution of alumni programs across key territories, managed strategic working groups, and worked closely with the Alumni Board to strengthen relationships that ensured continued success and growth. Jenna has a passion for creating unforgettable experiences, turning ideas into reality, and creating spaces where people can gather to make new connections, foster relationships, and enhance their professional career.
In her capacity at YCCI, Jenna will spearhead conferences, executive speaking engagements, executive education, and various other programs to amplify the collaborative work of academics and industry.
Jenna graduated from Illinois State University with a B.S. in International Business and minor in Germanic Languages.