ARF Adds Tom Higgins as Chief Operating and Financial Officer and Christopher Bacon as EVP, Global Quality Innovation in Series of Key Leadership Moves

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jan 27, 2015) - The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is pleased to announce that Thomas Higgins has joined as the COO/CFO (Chief Operating and Financial Officer) reporting to Gayle Fuguitt, CEO and President, the ARF, and Christopher Bacon joins as EVP, Global Quality Innovation, reporting initially to Charles Kennedy, Chief Research and Innovation Officer, the ARF.

Tom Higgins brings a wealth of experience to the ARF reflecting a career, which began at Ernst & Young and was followed by over 10 years in his own consultancy where he served a wide variety of clients across numerous industries. Importantly, in the non-profit arena, Tom spent over 10 years at the College Board, where he drove financial and operational improvements and developed financial strategies, which significantly strengthened its financial position and allowed it to pursue its mission of equity and access to educational opportunity as well as adding to the member value proposition. Adding to his not-for-profit portfolio, Tom was most recently the Chief Financial Officer of a large health and social services agency in New York City.

Prior to joining the ARF Chris Bacon led the global Consumer Insights team at the Gallo Winery, where he reshaped the function to focus on driving consumer and shopper insights and learning into the enterprise-wide decision-making process. Chris began his career at General Mills, taking on leadership roles of increasing responsibility across advertiser verticals at Pillsbury, Citibank, Pepsi, and Colgate-Palmolive. Prior to joining Gallo, Chris was Global Director of Consumer Insights for the Personal Care Division of Colgate-Palmolive. Chris earned his BS degree from Yale University and his MS in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Research Quality Innovation is the foundation of success for better decisions driven by big data today. The ARF has invested immense time and resources in two major "Foundations of Quality" initiatives over the past 5 years. Chris Bacon's leadership role will build on this rock solid foundation of groundbreaking research funded and supported by our members, and expand the initiatives with focus on global mobile research leading practices as well as input quality in cross platform measurement, privacy, fraud avoidance and overall quality measurement assurance.

About the ARF

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) provides leading and bleeding edge solutions for our members, and evangelizes the team that leads them into action. Together, we challenge conventions and discover new insights that benefit our member network. This collaboration yields meaningful, actionable, and indispensable insights that empower our member network to have a true impact on their marketing and leadership in their organizations.

The ARF is located at 432 Park Avenue South, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 and on the web at www.thearf.org. To learn more about the ARF's annual Re:Think 2015, visit: https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/89073.