As a volunteer-driven nonprofit institute dedicated to educating market researchers and insights professionals, MRII believes in providing equal access to educational opportunities. Moreover, MRII supports efforts to combat racism, discrimination, inequality and injustice.
To put this into action, MRII created the Diversity Award in 2022 for individuals residing in the US who come from under-represented groups in the population and want to enhance their market research insights skills. Sponsored by Full Circle Research, the MRII Diversity Award covers the cost of a Principles Express course presented by MRII and University of Georgia.
MRII congratulates Brae L. Fletcher, our most recent Diversity Award Winner. We invite you to read her story below including the value she places on her award and how it’s helping further her career.
1. What motivated you to apply for the MRII Diversity Award?
I was looking into going back to school to start my master’s degree but I wanted to make sure I would be learning things relevant to my line of work so when I saw that there was a one-off class I decided to apply and see what it was like. A coworker actually recommended I apply for this specific scholarship.
2. What does it mean to you that you were selected as the MRII Diversity Award winner?
It was really nice getting selected for the award. I appreciate the opportunity to expand my knowledge of the marketing research
3. Tell us about your motivations for pursuing a market research/insights career?
I was a math major in undergrad and didn’t have clear sight into the field of work I wanted to go into. I only knew that I wanted to work in a field that impacts people’s lives. I was recommended to apply for my company’s summer internship and I took that summer to really explore a career in research and the possibilities that would come with it. Thankfully I had a great time that summer and fell in love with marketing research and was able to start my career right out of college.
4. What were your initial expectations for the Introduction to Market Research and the Research Process express course?
My only hope/expectation going into this course was that it should help improve my understanding of how to structure a research study based on any given business need. I don’t have a background in insights so I needed to learn the basics so that I could better understand the reasoning behind our workplace procedures.
5. Tell us about your experience with the course.
The course was really helpful! It was easy to follow and engaging enough to keep me interested throughout. I did however learn very quickly that 30 days goes by fast so I also got to work on my time management skills as an added bonus.
6. What feature(s) about the course were most valuable to you?
Two sections helped me most during this course, the section on addressing specific marketing needs and the section on reporting and presenting reports. These two helped add a lot of context on how to take a question, turn it into study, execute the study, and then report the findings in a clear and digestible way for my clients. They were two sections that I could immediately put into practice at work.
7. How do you look to leverage your course experience as you progress in your research and insights career?
I plan to use the knowledge from this course to design better research studies for my brand clients.
To learn more about the MRII Diversity Award and other MRII awards, click here.
