Kellie Coppola
Research & Innovation Consultant
Kellie
Curiously-Compact Question Curator. Mayor of “Outside the Box.” Resident Dog-Watcher.
What do you do?
As a SEEK Research and Innovation Consultant, my job is to design and execute methodologies that enable brands to act on behalf of the consumer. Whether my task is insights, ideation, or brand strategy, I show up as a partner to my clients and my internal team by bringing an analytical mind and a creative writer’s perspective to the table.
My specialties include creative project design, moderating, training clients in empathy, and insight and tension development.
What's your background?
I have always known three things to be true: I live to know “why”, people and places fascinate me, and I love to write. This led to a degree in International Studies and a degree in Professional Writing from Miami University, but left me with trepidation about what my entryway into a professional career might look like.
On one sunny October day during the fall semester of my senior year, Justin Masterson came into an Entrepreneurship class I was taking. Through vulnerable storytelling and a creative activity involving an orange, he revealed a threshold that connected my affinities for storytelling and human understanding with business: market research. On that day, I found my entryway; I went through that door and never looked back. After graduation, I decided to pack up and move to Cincinnati and do whatever it took to work at SEEK. After months of chatting with SEEK employees, UBER driving, bartending and sleeping on friends’ couches, I walked through our office doors as an intern.
Since then, I’ve carved a room of my own on the accounts team: as an intern, as a Research and Innovation Association (RIA), and now as a Research and Innovation Consultant (RIC). Over the past few years I’ve helped client teams uncover and uphold the human story in all that they do. I’ve made footprints in a variety of industries, but I specialize in pharma, B2B, CPG, food and beverage, and retail.
Favorite book, quote or song?
Favorite Song: “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Favorite Quote: “Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”- Mark Manson
Favorite ways to destress: Work out or cook with a ton of butter and cheese
Something you’ve found inspiring?
“There’s a Hole in my Sidewalk” a poem by Portia Nelson
The poem is an allegory of what happens when we stop ignoring our behaviors that aren’t serving us, take ownership of them in a way that gives us control, and ultimately use our self-awareness to overcome them and arrive at success. I firmly believe that self-improvement requires introspection, ownership of strengths and weaknesses, and (most importantly) actively making choices that benefit us, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. This poem reminds me of this whenever I feel like I’m in a rut.