Your Team
Greg Head, Senior Partner
Greg Head is the CEO and senior marketing strategist with SmartThink Marketing Group. With over 25 years of strategic consulting and market research experience, Greg has consulted with a variety of companies and advertising agencies, helping them produce award-winning advertising communications, launch successful new products and revitalize older brands.
His work in the field has been well-recognized. He received several awards including the Coors Innovation Award for New Product Development, the American Marketing Association AMY Award for Research Integration, and the Turner Broadcast System Marketing Science Award.
Additionally, his insights have been instrumental, resulting in his clients winning prestigious advertising awards: the Golden Lion and the Gold Effie. He also holds a patent for his work in New Product Development. Greg’s work in the multicultural space, particularly focused on Blacks in the U.S., has been cited by Black Enterprise and others.
Charise Shields; partner, market research guru
Charise Shields, partner, is a market research guru and chief storyteller with SmartThink Marketing Group. With over 15 years of marketing insights mining, research experience, and brand building within some of the largest Fortune 50 corporations in America. Charise has been recognized as an adept partner at translating customer insights into business opportunities for brand, product, and advertising initiatives. She has led multiple global teams in successfully growing their target markets and thus their bottom-lines. She has an intimate understanding of not only how to tease out the most critical insights that build brands and businesses but also how to “walk the halls” and socialize these insights in order to bring cross-functional teams together to achieve their intended goals based on these learnings/insights.
Tim Gohmann, PhD; Chief Science Officer
Tim began his career at Burke Research in Cincinnati where he co-developed the Burke Seminar Program. He moved to Coca-Cola Foods as Manager of Custom Research, then to Coca-Cola GmbH as Business Development Manager for Central Europe, to Wirthlin Worldwide as the leader of project management teams for domestic public affairs, marketing studies and non-U.S. political research. He then became Vice President of Marketing for rsc/ARS Group. Moving to J.D. Power and Associates, he founded the Travel Practice for the airline, rental car, hotel, meeting planning and airport verticals. In 2005, Tim joined TNS leading the Emerging Sector in the U.S. overseeing the polling, travel and leisure, automotive and third-party business units.
FScott Harris, partner; Head of Business Analytics
Scott Harris, partner, business analyst, and Chief Revenue Officer at SmartThink has over a decade of experience innovating and building profitable businesses for some of the world’s best known Fortune 500 companies and brands. His journey into the world of business development started with an MBA from Harvard School of Business and as a consultant with McKinsey & Company. From there he has worked extensively with companies and brands such as Kraft Foods, Groupon, and Google to maximize their revenue and valuations. Scott is an expert at “making brands make money”, and we infuse that thinking into all of our assignments.
Elizabeth Guerrero-Sandstrom, Project Director, Moderator
Elizabeth Guerrero Sandstrom is a senior research associate and moderator working primarily with Hispanic groups. In addition to moderating, Elizabeth is a translator accredited by the Atlanta Association of Interpreters & Translators (AAIT). She is also fluent in conversational French. As an instructor, you can find her teaching Spanish and English as a Second Language to business professionals.
Thomas Watts; Creative Director/Strategist
Thomas Watts is a strategic creative who approaches problem-solving and innovation from a unique perspective. A graduate of the Art Institute of Seattle and Academy of Art University in San Francisco, he has enjoyed the opportunity to work as both an art director, writer and strategic thinker on numerous accounts. Thomas is well known and recognized for his accomplishments in advertising. Some of his award-winning work includes: American Graphic Design Award – California State Lottery; East Bay Addy (Public Service) – Calif. Dept. of Health Services; Best of Division (Public Service), East Bay Addy – Calif. Dept. of Health Services; Silver Addy – California Public Utilities Commission and Silver Effie for Advertising Effectiveness – UC Davis Health System.
Kenneth Johnson; Award-winning filmmaker and ethnographer
Ken Johnson, retired Army veteran, is an accomplished and award winning filmmaker, producer and expert in digital media. Some of his producing and shooting credits include the tech giant Google, TRU TV, formerly Court TV, TV One, Black Enterprise Television, Telepictures, the NFL, the NCAA, and Turner Broadcasting. Never straying too far from his military roots, Ken worked with the Dept. of Defense’s Global War on Terrorism, as a media editor for Three Army and a media analyst for the Joint Military Information Support Command. As a media analyst, Kenneth monitored and analyzed Middle East and Southwest Asia media outlets by conducting quantitative analysis and briefings as well as determining advertising objectives, and message creation for PSAs being produced in the region.