Timothy Cornelius, Director of Operations at QuestionPro, has been named the 2022 Fearless Leader by the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards, powered by Quirks. Cornelius is on a mission to make market research more equitable – and more accurate – by evangelizing for adoption of processes, technologies and personnel to make all aspects of market research accessible to people with disabilities. He was chosen from a pool of more than 200 other applicants.
Cornelius upended and improved the internal methods at QuestionPro and then went on to found P3 Technology, a mission driven organization that provides tools and resources to researchers. He’s now a featured speaker at industry events, podcasts and end client engagements as he makes the powerful moral and business case for accessibility.
“It’s an honor to be recognized by my peers, but it’s even more rewarding to see the issue of accessibility being recognized as critical to our profession,” said Cornelius. “Excluding people with disabilities from research isn’t just morally wrong, it’s bad business. All of us in the industry can – and must – do a better job to ensure we’re reaching out to the community of people with disabilities.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 61 million (about 1 in 4) Americans have some form of a disability. Anyone involved in market research, branding, advertising and communications who is not tailoring content, experiences, websites, surveys and outreach to this group is missing the opinions and insights from 25 percent of Americans and likely disqualifying the research.
According to the American Institute for Research (AIR), Americans with disabilities spend about $490 billion per year. But, the AIR report also notes: “People with disabilities are not a solitary market; they are surrounded by family members and friends who also recognize the value in products and services that accommodate all people in society.” Thus, omitting people with disabilities – and their support network – not only damages the integrity of market research, it passes over a market segment that could become loyal and profitable customers.
The Marketing Research and Insight Excellence awards consist of categories covering both individual and team achievements as well as awards for best projects, Market Research tools and those that give of their talents to make the world a better place. Powered by Quirk’s Media the awards shine a much-deserved spotlight on the researchers, vendors and products and services that are adding value and impact to marketing research. The awards are judged by nearly 40 Quirk’s editorial staff and end-client and/or supplier-side researchers.
“I founded and have been CEO of QuestionPro for nearly 20 years, and it wasn’t until Tim came to me and said we’re doing something very wrong, and we need to fix it, did I realize that we hadn’t been accommodating people with disabilities in our research methodologies,” said Vivek Bhaskaran, founder and CEO of QuestionPro. “I told Tim, simply, do what needs to be done to fix this. He did and I am proud of him.”
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