GfK SE appoints two new Regional General Managers effective September 1, 2017. Cheong Tai will lead GfK’s Asia-Pacific business, Margret Schuit will be responsible for GfK’s activities in Southern Europe. They will both directly report to the CEO, Peter Feld.

Peter Feld, CEO of GfK, said: “Cheong Tai and Margret Schuit are highly skilled managers with longstanding experience in managing regional business units of global organizations, in particular in the market research business. Throughout their careers, both of them successfully led transformation processes and developed digital innovations with a strong client focus. This is exactly the skill set we need to accelerate digitization at GfK and strengthen the competitiveness of our company amongst our regional businesses.”

Cheong Tai has more than 15 years of international leadership experience across emerging and developing markets. Since 2010, she was Regional President at Nielsen, responsible for the regions Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Singapore. In this role, she led the company’s growth strategy and improved client management by accelerating efforts to help clients grow their businesses. Cheong Tai created a digital culture across the organization and set up Nielsen’s first Innovation Lab outside the US. She joined Nielsen in 2008 as Chief Operating Officer and successfully led the technology-driven transformation of operations, thereby significantly improving quality and productivity. Under her leadership, the company was able to build up a consistent and scalable platform to enable further growth. Prior to joining Nielsen, she held various management roles at GE, helping the company to create an integrated Asia-wide IT infrastructure and thus improving the speed of product innovations.

Margret Schuit has been working in international companies, driving organizational development and change and building strong teams throughout her career. She is already an integral part of GfK’s international organization, having joined GfK’s Dutch organization in 2014 as Head of Consumer Experiences. In 2016, she was appointed Managing Director. In these roles, she transformed the former dispersed structure consisting of three separate business units to one integrated organization. Under her leadership, the Dutch GfK organization was appointed Market Research Agency of the Year in 2016, due to its outstanding focus on client needs, its connected solutions offering and the drive for digital innovations. Prior to working for GfK, Margret Schuit held management positions at Ipsos and Beiersdorf and spent a substantial part of her career at Nielsen where she led several organizational transformation processes.

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