UK Leadership Team

Blair Ruelens joined IRI in January 2009. Blair was previously Group Director and Executive Vice President for Global Sales with Cadbury Schweppes plc (London) where he had full general management and cross functional responsibility as global head of their 16,000 strong beverage and confectionery sales organisation. Here Blair led a number of strategic growth initiatives in areas such as retailer collaboration (including personal leadership of strategic relationships with Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour) as well as a series of best practice operational innovations designed to improve business efficiency and profitability.

Blair previously held senior sales positions with General Mills, Pillsbury and XL Foods, having started his career at Procter and Gamble where he served in a number of Sales and Marketing roles over 17 years. A Canadian, Blair graduated from York University, Toronto with a BA Honours in Business and Urban Planning and he has lived in London with his wife and family since 2006.

As a geography student during the late 70’s and early 80’s, Tash spent his holidays working as a general store assistant at J Sainsbury in Solihull, unwittingly sowing the seeds for his future career in continuous retail tracking. He resisted his vocation for another five years when he worked as an environmental scientist for the National Environmental Research Council and then joined ACNielsen in 1988.

Whilst at ACNielsen Tash worked in the client service division across a range of FMCG blue chip clients from the grocery, household and drinks industries. In this time, ACNielsen launched the first retail scanning service Scantrack and added the Homescan consumer panel to their product portfolio.

Tash’s experience with drinks manufacturers led him into the pub industry in 1992 where he was Marketing Policies Manager for Ind Coope Retail (Allied Lyons). His role was to utilise EPoS information from 500 pubs to evaluate effectiveness of their promotions, merchandising, stocking and pricing activities.

After 2 years Tash moved to work for Information Resources in January 1994 and has enjoyed numerous roles throughout the company. Today, as Commercial Director, he manages the Business Insights team responsible for delivering and developing the company’s services with its major manufacturing clients.

Lisa joined IRI in 2003 as the UK Finance Director and early in 2004 also assumed responsibility for Property and Facilities.

Before joining IRI, Lisa worked for AC Nielsen for 4 years. She was part of the management team that led Belgium, France & the Netherlands in addition to heading up the Netherlands finance team and latterly managed financial projects across Europe. She also worked for a short time with TNS, managing the finances of 6 of their UK businesses.

Lisa is qualified as a chartered management accountant, and brings a wealth of experience from other sectors including chemicals, engineering, communications and civil engineering.

Dan began his career in Ad-Hoc Research before moving to IRI in 1995. Since joining IRI, Dan has held a number of positions with the commercial team, with accountability for major IRI clients including Nestle, Unilever, and P&G.

In 2006 Dan moved along with his family to India, where he led the European Client Solutions Group in the IRI Global Operations Centre, Bangalore. During this time Dan was tasked with enhancing the quality and productivity of existing processes, and setting up a Business Insights capability.

Dan rejoined the IRI UK team in September 2007, and will continue to focus on the transformation of the UK business along with key client renewals.

Mark joined IRI in 2004 and is currently responsible for managing and developing the ongoing relationships with our retailer clients.

Mark is perfectly positioned for this role due to his prior experience working as a Client Service Director within the Client Service function, managing and developing a number of high value clients.

Not only does Mark have experience of the agency side, but before working at IRI Mark held a number of Commercial roles within the Marketing Services arena, including 4 years at CPM, the UK’s leading Field Marketing Business and working Client side with IDV (Diageo) for 4 years, specifically in Sales and Account Management.

Mark graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from Oxford Brookes in 2000.

Kirsty Harris-Clarke is currently on maternity leave from her role as UK Retail Director. In this role Kirsty was responsible for leading and managing all commercial aspects of the Retail Solutions Department including procurement of data into IRI and the provision of data and insights back to retailer clients.

Kirsty has more than 11 years of experience in the market research industry and has been with IRI since 1999 having worked within both Client and Retail Solutions.

Kirsty is a qualified teacher and has a bachelor of Education degree.

Simon has worked at IRI for 13 years. In his current role he is responsible for the Commercial Services and Content Product Marketing teams. These teams manage some of the larger Commercial processes such as revenue forecasts, contracts, client transition, project management and product development. Simon joined IRI in the Commercial group and has previously been responsible for the Client Service team as well as the Analytic Insights and TCS teams.

Before joining IRI Simon worked for Gillette in a UK sales role and for Wellcome, managing the sales and marketing effort for its consumer products through distributors in the Middle East and Far East.

Ros joined IRI from the Quintiles Corporation in February 2005 and has extensive experience in HR gained in a variety of industry sectors including pharmaceuticals, finance, IT and consultancy.

As an HR Director Ros has over 8 years of experience and has also worked as the Group Training and Development Director for Dun and Bradstreet where she ran their training centre and specialised in management development.

Ros holds master degrees in both HR and Management Development and is also a Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development.

During her time in HR, Ros has been responsible for leading organisational development initiatives, including mergers and TUPE transfers, implementing new performance management and competency systems, designing and running assessment and development centres, policy development, revising compensation and benefit programmes, talent management and succession planning, relocation of offices and employee relations.

Fiona Stevenson brings over 20 years of software development, consulting, project and people management experience to her role at IRI. Since 1998, Fiona has led the UK Technology Consulting Team. The UK team have completed a number of major developments for multi-country data mapping and integration as well as custom developments in application areas such as promotion planning, out of stocks and managing daily retail data. Previously Fiona spent 3 years at Oracle as a Principal Consultant and latterly as a Consulting Client Manager specialising in Business Intelligence and Decision Support Solutions.

As part of her role at Oracle she set up the Europe, Middle East & Africa Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Training Plan and delivered courses to new consultants. Prior to Oracle, Fiona spent over 2 years in Japan setting up the IRI Tokyo office and establishing the software consultancy business as IRI's first resident employee. While in Tokyo she was responsible for the multi-national accounts which were predominately CPG manufacturers and she also worked closely with Andersen Consulting and Chuo Coopers & Lybrand.

Previously Fiona worked on the implementation of a TV Ratings Analysis System, the development of a Multi-Lingual Software Application Generator and developed tools for statistical analyses.

Alison has been with IRI for 13 years and during that time has led a number of Operations teams, latterly leading UK teams in the transfer of processes to the Global Operations centre in Bangalore. Alison was also responsible for leading the company towards BS 7911 certification and retains responsibility for the maintenance of the quality management system.

In April 2007 Alison also assumed responsibility for the Netherlands Operations division. Currently Alison is working closely with other colleagues on the Leadership team to implement the new Client Service and Business Insight model both in the UK and in Bangalore.

Before joining IRI Alison worked for an international hotel broker in a number of roles including international commission payments, client promotions and the development of an international electronic commission payment system.

Alison is a graduate of the University of Nottingham with a BA in German with French,