Sr. Manager Consumer Insights & Capabilities

Sr. Manager Consumer Insights & Capabilities

Full-time
- Americas
- Chicago

The Role

Kearney is seeking a Consumer Insights & Capabilities Lead to help strengthen how we bring the voice of the consumer into our client work and build consumer insights capabilities across the firm.

This individual will play a dual role: leading consumer insights across select client engagements while partnering with leadership to develop, codify, and scale the capabilities, methodologies, and tools that enable our teams to consistently deliver high‑quality consumer insights.

The Consumer Insights & Capabilities Lead will also bring a strong consumer perspective to business development and thought leadership, helping Kearney translate evolving consumer needs, behaviors, and trends into differentiated perspectives and opportunities for our clients.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the consumer insights lead on select client engagements, independently leading work streams and stepping in for the VP as needed.
• Assess clients’ existing consumer research and knowledge to determine what is known, identify critical gaps, and develop a clear point of view on the additional insights required.
• Recommend the right research approaches and studies based on the business question, existing knowledge, timeline, and desired outcomes.
• Lead the day‑to‑day execution of consumer insights work streams, partnering with project teams, the Consumer Insights COE, research partners, and clients.
• Synthesize research into clear, compelling insights and implications that directly inform strategy, innovation, and decision‑making.
• Bring project teams up to speed on consumer learning and facilitate the application of insights, including ideation, concept development, and evaluation of ideas.

Build and Scale Consumer Insights Capabilities

• Partner with the VP to develop and strengthen the firm’s core consumer insights capabilities, methodologies, and offerings.
• Help codify best practices and develop repeatable approaches, tools, and frameworks that enable teams to deliver high‑quality consumer insights consistently.
• As new capabilities are developed, design the workflows, processes, systems, and supporting materials required to operationalize and scale them across the organization.
• Build the knowledge and confidence of broader teams to effectively integrate consumer insights into their work.

Support Business Development & Thought Leadership

• Bring a strong consumer lens to business development efforts, ensuring proposals, hypotheses, and recommendations are grounded in consumer needs, behaviors, and evidence.
• Partner with broader teams to shape differentiated, consumer‑backed approaches for prospective clients.
• Develop thought leadership, perspectives, and knowledge that create proactive conversations with clients and generate demand for consumer insights capabilities.
• Identify emerging consumer topics, methodologies, and trends that can create new opportunities for client engagement and capability development.

Who You Are

After nearly 100 years, we know that our people make the difference. We are looking for someone who is collaborative, insightful, inquisitive, and excited by the opportunity to both deliver outstanding consumer insights and build capabilities that can scale across the firm.

You bring:

• 5-10 years’ experience in consumer insights, consumer research, and translating consumer understanding into actionable business recommendations.
• Experience selecting and applying qualitative and quantitative research methodologies based on the business question and available evidence.
• The ability to synthesize complex research and data into clear, compelling insights and implications for senior stakeholders.
• Strong project and workstream leadership skills, with the ability to operate independently and collaborate effectively with consulting teams, clients, and external research partners.
• Experience building or codifying consumer insights methodologies, tools, frameworks, or organizational capabilities.
• A strong consumer orientation and an ability to bring the consumer perspective into strategy, innovation, and business development.
• Excellent communication,…