Namika Sagara, Ph.D.

Behavioral Scientist, Sagara Consulting LLC

Namika Sagara Ph.D. is a behavioral scientist with 15+ years of experience in behavioral economics and consumer decision-making research. Currently, she’s a president of Sagara Consulting LLC and works with a wide range of industries including financial and insurance to help companies learn how consumer actually behave (as opposed to how they think they behave or how they think they should behave). She does so by conducting consumer research and behavioral economics experiments in various business environments to identify the driver of the irrational behaviors to help business create more effective customer’s decision making environments as well as communication tactics.

In addition to research consultations, she offers training workshops as well as keynote speeches at national conferences to discuss the essence of behavioral economics and the applications of behavioral tactics in various business and functional areas. 

 She also holds a visiting research position at Duke University where she conducts consumer behavior research with professors from leading universities, such as Columbia and UCLA. She also has taught marketing courses as well as research methods courses at the University of Oregon. Her work has been published in prestigious peer-reviewed academic journals and also has appeared in numerous media outlets, such as the Guardian and Science Daily. Dr. Sagara received her B.S. and M.S. in Psychology and Ph.D. in Marketing from University of Oregon, and was a Post Doctoral Associate at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Kathryn Korostoff

President, Lead Instructor Research Rockstar LLC

Kathryn Korostoff is president and lead instructor at Research Rockstar, which has provided training to over 1,500 professionals seeking market research excellence. With a team of seven instructors, Research Rockstar delivers virtual classroom and on-demand training on qualitative and quantitative research topics.

Over the past 25 years, Kathryn has personally directed more than 600 primary market research projects and published over 100 bylined articles in various magazines, including the MRA’s Alert! Magazine and Quirk’s Marketing Research Review. Kathryn is also the author of, “How to Hire & Manage Market Research Agencies,” available on Amazon, and co-author of the book, “10 Answers to Contemporary Market Research Questions,” available from ESOMAR. She has been a featured speaker at American Marketing Association (AMA), AMAI, ESOMAR, and Marketing Research Association (MRA) events. Kathryn also serves as a Marketing Research Association (MRA) Board member. 

Our selected past workshops and online courses in 2015:

- Special all-day marketing research training course at Annual Marketing Research Association: Developed and delivered a workshop on behavioral economics for market researchers. Received the highest attendance rate. (Co-instructor: Kathryn Korostoff, Eligible for Professional Researcher Certification) 

- Online course on behavioral economics for market researchers: Developed and delivered an online course on behavioral economics for market researchers. (Eligible for Professional Researcher Certification). 

- Workshop on behavioral economics at annual Corporate Researchers Conference: Developed and delivered two 4-hour workshops on behavioral economics for market researchers. (Eligible for Professional Researcher Certification).