The Partners
One line we never use is that we will “know your business better than you.” All the CenterBrain Partners have managed major businesses, and we know the passion and expertise you bring to your particular brand can’t be gained from a brief assignment. Yet because of our extensive experience listening and creating with consumers in more than 70 consumer product and service businesses, we know that we can bring significant improvements to the communication you are using to reach your unique consumers. Our partners are seasoned veterans. The key members of the CenterBrain team that will work on your business are:
Jim Ebel
President and Creative Leader
jim@centerbraininc.com
Not in his right mind and not in his left. This would best describe Jim Ebel. A unique combination of natural creativity and acquired strategic thinking developed from running businesses at Kimberly-Clark, Bristol-Myer’s Squib, Rhone-Poulenc-Rorer and the Iams Company led Jim to form CenterBrain Partners in 1991. Jim pioneered a number of approaches designed to consult the consumer to stimulate and shape creative positioning. These approaches have been formalized as part of the many products CenterBrain Partners offers today.
To date, Jim’s creative leadership has resulted in over 170 new product and repositioning successes for categories from tuna to tires, power tools to pregnancy test kits, insoles to insulin monitors and a wide range of products in between. Jim still leads all creative initiatives for CenterBrain.
Jim recently served as chief marketing officer at The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) and as an executive-in-residence of the College of Business at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Tom Wilson
Managing Partner
tom@centerbraininc.com
Tom has 32 years of marketing and general management experience building consumer packaged goods businesses with Kimberly-Clark and Colgate-Palmolive. He also started his first company at age 25, manufacturing underground mining equipment. During his 22 years at Kimberly-Clark, Tom served as vice president of new business development (new products, acquisitions, brand licensing); president of the global Adult Care Sector (Depend© and Poise© brands), president of the global Feminine Care Sector (Kotex® brand) and business manager of wet wipes (Huggies© baby wipes).
As marketing director of Huggies diapers, he introduced the Huggies Ultratrim with year one sales of $575 million (now over $1 billion). It became IRI’s No. 1 largest non-food product ever.
Carla Hamill
Research & Graphics Partner
carla@centerbraininc.com
Carla brings a unique combination of skills and talents to CenterBrain — both left brain and right brain. After a successful career managing a major Cincinnati-based market research fi rm specializing in national and international qualitative and quantitative pharmaceutical, consumer healthcare and business-to-business research, Carla joined CenterBrain in 2005. Carla has a wide breadth of experience leading all aspects of marketing research, from recruiting, study design, database management, and, of course, impeccable client service. Carla leads our in-house recruiting team “CenterSearch” and is responsible for all study execution.
Amy Bennet
Account Management Partner
amy@centerbraininc.com
Amy has 20 years of experience in brand and direct marketing. As the directorof Integrated Brand Marketing at Ole Miss and as director of Marketing/Sales/Customer Service for the National Center for Construction Education andResearch (NCCER), Amy conceived and managed national marketing initiativesand campaigns. She has worked with a variety of industries and organizations.She brings in-depth experience in marketing to the commercial and industrialconstruction sectors, as well as to secondary and post-secondary education markets.Amy is passionate about customer service and a stickler for meeting deadlines. Ina creatively charged environment, she listens to clients, learns their business, andworks with them to deliver results.
Michael Jones
Quantitative Research Partner
michael@centerbraininc.com
After working in sales with General Mills Corp., Michael earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. He joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as the Alan S. Lorberbaum Professor of Marketing and now serves as department head for finance, marketing and entrepreneurship. Michael fits the CenterBrain model perfectly with a blend of real-world experience and academic excellence. Michael is regarded as a top-notch quantitative analyst and is a highly regarded academician with the publication of several cutting-edge research articles on financial services and retail marketing.
Sandy Yost
Research Partner
Sandy brings more than 17 years experience in global consumer research for a wide range of consumer brands including Intel, Huggies, Kleenex, and Depend. Her experience includes leading brand expansions into Asia, The Middle East, and South America. She has a deep understanding of research design and behavioral psychology to ensure valid results are produced on research projects. Sandy directs multi-country research assignments for CenterBrain ensuring consistency, accuracy, and impeccable execution across the cultural divides. Her experience as a purchasing agent guarantees that every dollar spent on research is a working dollar.