Lucy Gathii

Customer insights and impact professional with experience helping organizations across Africa and Asia turn customer intelligence into practical business decisions that improve customer experience, product performance, operational effectiveness, and investment outcomes. Proven track record translating complex market, consumer, and operational data into actionable recommendations that strengthen product adoption, inform market expansion, and support evidence-based decision-making. Experienced leading cross-functional, multi-country project teams across FMCG, financial inclusion, digital innovation, energy access, agriculture, and social impact sectors.

Recognized for building trusted client relationships and delivering high-quality insight programmes that help organizations make sense of customer needs and drive measurable commercial and program outcomes.

Associate at 60 Decibels Limited (2022-04 – Present)

Led end-to-end delivery of multi-country customer insight and impact measurement projects, partnering with clients to translate customer evidence into business and programme decisions.

• Partnered with leadership teams across Africa to answer critical questions about customer adoption, product performance, and social impact, enabling investment, scaling, and resource allocation decisions.
• Converted complex consumer and operational data into actionable recommendations that helped organizations improve product adoption, refine service delivery models, reduce customer pain points, and strengthen customer experience.
• Guided organizations in using customer and market intelligence to improve programme effectiveness and make evidence-based decisions across growth markets through multi-country customer and impact insight programmes.
• Supported investor and stakeholder engagement by translating impact performance findings into clear business narratives that informed funding discussions and organizational positioning.
• Managed relationships with global clients, consistently delivering high-quality insight programmes that contributed to a 30% increase in repeat business and long-term client retention.
• Led cross-functional remote teams across multiple markets to deliver high-priority projects with a 94% on-time delivery rate, ensuring operational efficiency and consistent execution against client objectives.
• Oversaw end-to-end impact measurement programmes across the energy, agriculture, health, and financial inclusion sectors, enabling organizations to make informed decisions on programme improvement and scale.

Client Service Executive at Nielsen (2020-04 – 2022-03)

• Managed client relationships and delivered commercial insights that informed pricing, market performance, customer behaviour, and growth decisions across multiple African markets.
• Delivered commercial and customer intelligence that helped FMCG clients improve market share, optimize pricing and marketing investments, strengthen retail execution, and identify growth opportunities across African markets.
• Led the rollout of a regional FMCG retail tracking programme across six African countries, generating market performance insights that contributed to a 25% increase in client market share.
• Oversaw retail performance analysis across more than 5,000 outlets, providing executives with actionable visibility into category performance, customer behaviour, route-to-market effectiveness, and expansion opportunities.
• Directed large-scale digital data operations and remote field execution, ensuring timely delivery of business-critical intelligence used in commercial planning and market expansion decisions.
• Strengthened team capability through training and coaching, improving operational accuracy and enabling consistent delivery of high-quality commercial insights.
• Partnered with clients to identify market expansion opportunities and customer growth strategies that contributed to a 41% increase in East African client acquisition and revenue growth.
• Managed regulatory and ethical approvals across six countries, enabling seamless execution of cross-border initiatives and strengthening collaboration with partners and regulators.

Market and Social Researcher at Ipsos Kenya (2018-01 – 2020-03)

• Generated customer and market intelligence that informed financial inclusion strategies for the Central Bank and supported evidence-based expansion of financial access across East Africa.
• Led multi-country customer insight studies across Africa and Pakistan, helping policymakers and organizations better understand underserved markets and translate evidence into practical programme and business decisions.
• Improved data continuity and accelerated speed-to-insight by managing digital and CATI-based research operations that supported regulatory, customer, and market-entry decisions.
• Improved operational efficiency by streamlining multi-country project workflows and introducing scalable analytical systems that enabled faster delivery of actionable customer insights.
• Collaborated with cross-functional regional teams to deliver high-quality insight programmes under tight timelines, supporting responsive decision-making in rapidly evolving markets.

Social Researcher at Ipsos Kenya (2015-11 – 2017-12)

Master of Science in Marketing – University of Nairobi

Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Statistics – University of Eldoret