Verve Adds Two to its Board

London-based Verve has appointed two new Non-Executive Directors, Zoë Ruffels and Jon Whitmore, joining three existing Board members. The firm says the move will help accelerate the implementation of its strategy, including its Intelligent Personas solution.

Verve was founded in 2008 and was one of the pioneers of community panels - in the last few years it has evolved a cultural intelligence offering, invested heavily in AI, and now describes its offer as AI-Powered Insight, Grounded in Human Truth. Last week it announced a partnership with financial literacy platform and panel operator Prograd, to help boost Gen Z membership in its CoLab data quality and sustainable research initiative, and also announced eleven promotions.

Ruffels (pictured top) spent twenty years at Procter and Gamble, then led global insight organisations at Samsung, GSK and Mars. She is currently Global Head of Insights at Imperial Brands. Whitmore was CEO and the largest shareholder at Trigold, then the country's largest mortgage sourcing platform. He left the company in 2012, since when he has invested in fourteen business across the financial services, technology, leisure, education, technology and construction sectors.

Verve's Board Chairman is Geoff Westmore, a founder Chairman of Research Now and earlier Global Head of M&A at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The other two members are Neil Brown, a former director at Apax Partners who joined the Verve Board in 2014 after a long career in private equity; and Verve founder and CEO Andrew Cooper, previously a co-founder of Research Now.

'The advent of AI is a fundamental game-changer for our industry', says Westmore, 'and with our suite of AI products and our enhanced Board, Verve is uniquely placed to continue building on our market-leading position'.

Web site: www.addverve.com .