Savanta CEO Perowne Leaves MR Industry

Savanta's Roger Perowne is to leave the business and the MR industry, to work as a teacher - and has handed over the Global Chief Exec's role to Vin DeRobertis, previously CEO for the Americas.

Perowne (pictured) will teach Economics in a girls' grammar school, although he is currently listed as Chairman on the Savanta web site. He graduated in Economics from Durham University in 2000 and went to work initially as a Senior Consultant at Interbrand, before co-founding Morar Consulting in 2005. After a dozen years at the company, with the role of CEO, he helped lead its integration with four other agencies within the Next15 marcoms group, to form Savanta in 2019. Morar had merged with HPI Research eighteen months earlier, and now joined data collection house VIGA, financial consultancy Charterhouse and B2B firm Circle in the new group. Perowne became its Global CEO.

Since then, a flood of other agencies have joined the group: Perowne led the firm through the acquisitions of ComRes, HSR, Future Thinking (UK only), YouthSight, MSI International, MindSpark, Motif (previously Network Research), InfoSurv and Explorer Research; while Next15 bought ORC successor ENGINE UK. Remaining brand names were swallowed into 'a single, unified Savanta' in late 2022.

DeRobertis, who is based in New York, worked for Research Now for more than ten years in roles including SVP of Global Healthcare, leaving in 2017 to join MIG Global Ltd - the short-lived name for the merged Morar and HPI. After working as its Chief Strategy Officer, he became CEO Americas for the newly-formed Savanta in February 2019. Last week real-time consumer feedback platform OnePulse announced it had appointed him as a board advisor.

Perowne said on LinkedIn:

'It has been a total pleasure to work with literally thousands of brilliant people since conceiving of the business with Alistair [Cunningham] on a napkin at Vingt-Quatre in the wee hours. Many thanks to Next15 for believing in us, and for all of the businesses that chose Savanta as their long-term home. I'm delighted to hand over the reigns to Vin DeRobertis and will be cheering on from the sidelines.

Despite leaving market research, I feel very fortunate to have met so many lovely people that I care about. I hope our paths continue to cross on a regular basis - until then, bye'.

DRNO wishes him well in his new career. Having once been led into a classroom full of teenage girls and introduced as 'the man who's come to talk to us about careers' - when I had thought myself there to interview the teacher for a qual project on behalf of the UK government's Training Agency - I consider him a brave man.

Web site: www.savanta.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.