Ron Halverson, Ph.D.
Founder and President
708.524.8080 x223
ron.halverson@halversongroup.com
Ron Halverson is the President and founder of the Halverson Group. Ron has become a recognized innovator in his field since earning his Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology with specialties in Research Methodology and Applied Statistics from DePaul University in 1992.
Since founding the firm in 1997, Ron has assembled a top team of Ph.D.-level social scientists and has established a proven track record by working with some of the most recognized brands in the world such as McDonald’s, Home Depot, Famous Footwear and Toys “R” Us. He has also overseen the development of an exclusive package of technology and services for monitoring and quantifying consumer and employee behavior to dramatically improve the hit-rate and impact of product, service, and marketing innovations.
Ron has received several prominent research awards from the Academy of Management and his work on an extensive training evaluation program was named a Best Practice by the ASTD Benchmarking Consortium. His seminal research during a 5-year tenure as a Research Psychologist in the US Army Medical Services Corp prior to founding the firm is still being used by the Defense Department during recent engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dr. Halverson has authored numerous publications appearing in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, the Journal of Business and Psychology, the Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, Parameters, and Armed Forces and Society. He has also authored and presented his work at numerous international professional organizations, two of which won Best Paper awards from the Academy of Management.
Ron was elected twice as the President of the Chicago Region’s professional association of Organizational Psychologists. He is also an active member in the Academy of Management, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Society.
Kristen Carriveau Halverson
Vice President and Creative Director
708.524.8080 ext 225
kristen.halverson@halversongroup.com
As Vice President and Creative Director for Halverson Group, Kristen develops creative and innovative approaches for communicating complex ideas and information in an effective and dynamic manner. Kristen is a highly experienced Information Architect and Graphic Designer, holding senior positions in top design studios in Washington DC and Chicago before joining the firm over 10 years ago.
Kristen’s intuitive understanding of workflow, exceptional organizational skills and her technical knowledge also allow her to successfully direct complex projects. She has over 15 years of high-level project management experience within various environments including marketing communications and graphic design, corporate advertising and communications, publishing, and printing. She has extensive experience successfully managing large-scale projects for clients such as NEC Technologies, Harris Bank, MCI Telecommunications, Software AG, and HarperCollins Publishers.
Kristen has extensive vendor management experience and has managed multi-million dollar annual printing and production budgets. Additionally, Kristen uses her marketing and design background to create and maintain a consistently high-quality visual image of all deliverables.
Kristen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Communication from Saint Norbert College. She has also completed course work at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC and the University of Chicago. She is an active member of the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
Shelby Hoult, Ph.D.
Vice President, Organizational R+D Practice
708.524.8080 ext 224
shelby.hoult@halversongroup.com
Shelby Hoult is Vice President of the Organizational R&D Practice at Halverson Group. With 14 years of experience in applied research and consulting, Shelby plays the role of scientific and client relationship lead. She is responsible for integrating research methods, technologies, and team resources to deliver insights to our clients. Her expertise in project strategy and orchestration and cross-functional team facilitation make her a client partners wonder what they did without her.
Shelby has partnered with HR, Marketing, and Operational leads on program evaluations of high-profile organizational initiatives; significant data mining and analytic projects; large scale initiative implementation; development and implementation of large-scale employee and customer measurement systems; validation of employee selection systems; . She has also conducted extensive work in the area of organizational health and safety, specializing in the measurement of employee perceptions and their impact on organizational outcomes. Her clients have included McDonald’s Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, Caterpillar Inc, Chevron Corporation, and United Airlines.
Shelby has authored numerous papers and has presented at national conferences for the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Petroleum Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from DePaul University.
Trevor A. Kunkle, Ph.D.
Senior Project Director
708.524.8080 ext 233
trevor.kunkle@halversongroup.com
Trevor has 7 years of experience in applied research and consulting. At the Halverson Group, Trevor is responsible for project management, analysis, and work product design and delivery for custom research projects. Sample projects have included: Understanding business unit service and production system throughput and bottlenecks, Evaluating retail food service business unit staffing guideline effectiveness, Quantifying new product adoption rates by target customer segments, modeling the key drivers of business-unit sales volumes and their relative impact (e.g., location, operational performance, site layout), and assessing store layout, employee effectiveness, and customer experience of holiday retail shoppers.
Through these projects, Trevor has worked with HR, Marketing, and Operations organizations across the retail food service, retail, financial services, innovation, and manufacturing industries. In his work, he has continually found and come to appreciate the deep and creative thinking that is often necessary to solve company’s tough problems. Just as important, however, is the need to leverage analytic tools and effective communication and design to bring insights to life for clients in a way that can be communicated simply and effectively for decision makers.
Trevor has authored and contributed to a number of articles and research papers related to interpersonal relations, employee satisfaction, and workforce effectiveness and has spoken at a number of professional associations.
Trevor holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from DePaul University. His dissertation assessed the “Business unit level relationships between interactional justice, service climate, and service performance”.
Laura C. Radak, M.A.
Project Lead
708.524.8080 ext 227
laura.radak@halversongroup.com
Laura thrives on solving tough data problems. At the Halverson Group, Laura’s main responsibilities have centered on large scale data analyses and the development of data-driven business cases. She has helped our clients make sense of their customer satisfaction data, found patterns in employee experience data across multiple international markets, and validated and refined a multilevel employee selection tool. Laura stands out in clients’ minds as someone who always puts in the extra effort to go beyond expectations.
Her own research has focused on organizational climate and performance. For example, her research has established a link between organizational climate and absenteeism among first responders. She has presented her work at the Society for Community Research and Action and the Midwest Psychological Association. Currently, she is completing her PhD at DePaul University.
Bill Sallas, Ph.D.
Consumer and Operations Analyst
708.524.8080 ext 222
bill.sallas@halversongroup.com
Bill Sallas brings a varied set of experiences to the Halverson Group. Bill began his career as a teacher in the Chicago Public School system where he was one of a small set of educators selected to implement an innovative pilot curriculum. Teaching led Bill to study cognitive psychology in graduate school where his research focused on the role of technology in improving knowledge acquisition and on-the-job performance. At the Halverson Group, Bill is interested in examining how cognition and technology can influence employee performance and the customer experience.
Bill holds a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University where his dissertation examined the effect of combining direct instruction and experiential practice on task performance. Bill has authored papers on topics including human cognition, education, and healthcare informatics. He has also presented his research findings at national conferences.
Randy MacDonald, M.Design
Design Director
708.524.8080 ext 226
randy.macdonald@halversongroup.com
As the Design Director of Halverson Group, Randy is responsible for creating clear and compelling client research communications. In his role, Randy works in close collaboration with executives and research teams to help synthesis and visualize complex qualitative and quantitative findings.
Randy strongly believes the most powerful innovations are created at the “sweet spot” where design thinking, business strategy, social science methodology and digital media technology intersect. Randy uses these “poles” to guide his thinking when crafting research stories and marketing pieces for clients.
Randy earned his masters degree from the celebrated IIT Institute of Design, where he focused on Innovation Planning and Communication Design. Moreover, he holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.
Gilberto Pina
Project Engineer
708.524.8080 ext 263
gilberto.pina@halversongroup.com
Gilberto specializes in the practical application of video surveillance systems to help retailers improve the customer experience. As a project engineer, his primary role is to work closely with clients and technology partners to help create and implement Video Enabled Behavioral Analytics strategies.
Gilberto holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and has extensive experience with networking, virtualization and data storage.
Adam DeHoek, M.A.
Senior Analyst
708.524.8080 ext 228
adam.dehoek@halversongroup.com
Adam’s work at Halverson Group has included program field tests, data mining, and forecasting. Adam is bilingual, and he is most proud of his work most recently in the evaluation of an English as second language program that one of our clients pilot tested for their employees. Adam also has extensive experience auditing employee management systems (e.g., hiring, orientation, and training systems).
He is currently completing his PhD at Loyola University in the Department of Psychology. He teaches statistics at Loyola, and his research expertise includes a focus on the measurement of psychological constructs.
Jared Corrigan, M.A.
Senior Analyst
708.524.8080 ext 266
jared.corrigan@halversongroup.com
At Halverson Group, Jared has spent much of his time investigating ways to effectively improve business operations in retail environments. He has participated in studies conducted in both field and laboratory settings. Jared has devoted time to managing the data collection process as well. He is always eager to find ways to improve business processes and uncover solutions to business-related problems.
His own research has focused on the exploration of different psychological constructs among individuals working for service organizations. More specifically, he has researched the role that emotional labor/emotion regulation plays in service organizations. Jared recently received his M.A in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Elmhurst College.
Katie Prezas, M.A.
Manager, Operations Research
630.623.2275
katie.prezas@halversongroup.com
As the research manager of Halverson Group’s off-site lab, Katie serves as one of the front-line liaisons to the firm’s largest client. Katie manages the daily work flow for a team of video analysts and focuses on data integrity and quality, sample selection, technology management, and analyst training and productivity tracking. Katie also builds large databases and completes statistical analysis for reporting to our clients. During her time with Halverson, Katie has worked on both laboratory and field research projects with a focus on improving client operations while maintaining a high-quality customer experience.
Katie recently earned her M.A. in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Elmhurst College and is a member of both the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Association. She stays connected to Elmhurst by helping graduate students write their capstone thesis papers.
Malora McIntosh
Manager, Field Research
708.524.8080 ext 264
malora.mcintosh@halversongroup.com
As the manager of field research, Malora uses her diverse training in science, art, photography, and video to quickly expose industry-specific customer and employee behaviors. She is regularly sent out to the field to manage the collection of data and conduct the qualitative research that is an essential element in every data set.
When Malora is back at home base, she assists in managing the team of in-house analysts. Here, her insights from the field supplies the connectivity that facilitates the navigation of the most complex coding scenarios; while her drive for understanding successfully enlists the use of innovative collection and calibration devices and methodologies. Malora believes that innovation and creativity are the secret ingredients necessary for providing Halverson Group’s senior analysts with the clean and rich data that, ultimately, tells its own story.
Malora earned her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where her thesis exhibition engaged research and data as the basis for art practice and representation. Her current work employs alternative photographic processes as a way to visualize live streaming data. Malora has also studied Microbiology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Rebecca Bohrman, M.A., M.Phil.
Senior Analyst
Rebecca’s work at the Halverson Group has involved synthesizing and analyzing a large body of research on employee hiring, retention, and engagement.
She has over seven years of corporate research experience, in which she has used her qualitative and quantitative research skills to help clients with benchmarking, media strategies, corporate social responsibility campaigns, media monitoring, corporate crises, internal and external communications, and executive transitions.
Rebecca’s own research focuses on organizational decision-making and the causes of administrative dysfunction. She has published several papers and has presented her work at national conferences for the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, and the Northeastern Political Science Association, one of which received a best paper award. She holds an M. Phil. in Political Science from Yale University.
Adam Hill
Technology Coordinator
adam.hill@halversongroup.com
As Technology Coordinator Adam’s role is to maintain and manage the systems used to capture and store digital video for later analysis. Specializing in video and network infrastructure, Adam uses his knowledge to keep our analytics systems running as reliably as possible. He enjoys learning about and working with the latest technologies available in the field.
In-House Research Analyst Team
The in-house Halverson Group research team is currently comprised of nine talented full-time research analysts who bring with them an amazing amount of cultural and experiential diversity. The team utilizes video as their primary tool for capturing data, and they consistently maintain an efficient and accurate coding methodology. They exercise their years of their restaurant, retail, and social science knowledge as well as their distinct educational backgrounds to enrich each transaction with the valuable context and certainty that it deserves. The analysts that work at Halverson Group’s Oak Park location have developed a radar for process deviations and a keen sense for detail. They use various innovative, even experimental, video coding and data-mining strategies to ensure that our clients receive answers to all of their key business questions.
Client-Embedded Research Analyst Team
Located at on off-site client innovation center, our second analyst team consists of a multifaceted group of individuals with years of combined retail and service industry experience. The analysts spend most of their time conducting video analytics. Using video and audio feed from multiple sites, the team captures data on key metrics for an array of client projects. Since human behavior is inherently variable, our team focuses on in-depth training with our video systems and calibration with one another in order to provide our client with highly reliable information. The team is consistently looking for ways to improve themselves and their processes by working with one another to understand study objectives and utilize their multitude of experiences to bring unique insights to their work. The team has completed studies focusing on tracking operational performance over time, the impact of new technologies on staff experience, and how retail space design influences the customer experience.
