Intelligence, Insights and Solutions for Healthcare
Healthcare Market Research Supported By Evidence
About Cogenti
Cogenti Applied Strategies, Inc. is a healthcare and wellness market research, program development and consultancy firm with our focus on the opportunities provided by the intersection of healthcare and wellness with social media and mobile technologies.
Cogenti team members are experts in quality market research design, behavioral sciences, social media and the platform technologies needed to drive successful online communities, panels and syndicated studies.
Our team is lead by a group of executives highly respected and well known within market research and related fields, with extensive knowledge, experience and a track record of success for their clients.
Our Executive Team
Michael Fallig Ph.D.
Chief Research Officer
Managing Partner
Michael manages all areas of research for Cogenti communities and panels, developing Cogenti's "best practices" in research design and execution, as well as evaluating digital and emerging solutions including wireless, online, and virtual reality tools, including implicit, “passive” behavioral, observational and other unobtrusive measurement procedures (e.g., eye-tracking, text analytic & web “conversation” mining procedures “bio”, neuroscience and facial expression measures among others).
One area of particular interest to Michael is research quality, particularly as new methods evolve and mature. He has spoken about online research quality and approaches to sample blending at events and conferences, and is currently a member of the ARF’s Foundations of Quality 2 (FoQ 2) leadership team – and a co-chair of its initiative that is examining Survey Routers. He is also a member of the APA, AAPOR, and regularly attends and contributes to conferences and forums regarding research design and quality.
Michael has designed, conducted and consulted on numerous commercial research, social policy and healthcare projects across his 25 years in the research business. He has been intricately involved in the design of quantitative B2B and consumer research programs, segmentation and positioning studies for large-scale enterprises and their agencies.
With respect to healthcare, Michael, working with clients from Columbia University’s School of Public Health, examined the impact of managed care on the Medicaid population of NYC. This study examined the quality of care to patients as well as their satisfaction with a variety of providers and payers who were providing managed care to New York City’s Medicaid population.
Michael has also worked with Columbia-Presbyterian physicians and research staff on projects involving women’s health, alternative medicine usage among minority populations as well as consulting on other projects. He has participated in the recruitment of clinical trial subjects for NIH granted research on Alzheimers and other ailments and has conducted a variety of awareness, usage and satisfaction studies for major hospital systems.
Prior to becoming a partner of Cogenti Applied Strategies, Michael was a Senior Vice President within GfK’s Custom Research North America (CRNA) division, where he held leadership roles with respect to CRNA’s Online Strategy & Methodology within its Research Center for Excellence. He was the business leader from GfK who, along with counterparts from other major leading research firms, set out to establish an industry-wide consortium to address online and emerging technology standards, consistency and research quality issues within the market research industry.
Michael was also a member of GfK CRNA’s Corporate Innovation team where he was responsible for upstream product and service development including the design of a range of panel and private social community offerings.
Michael has been active in the field of behavioral, social, industrial and market research for 25 years and was a senior member (SVP) of the Survey Division of GfK’s legacy company, Audits & Surveys, where he was responsible for designing and overseeing many of Audits & Surveys’ B-2-B, “high tech” and consumer electronics custom and syndicated survey programs. Michael was instrumentally involved in the design of “Tech/Track”, and managed the ASW group that oversaw this syndicated, multi-client offering, sponsored by major tech firms such as IBM, HP, Intel.
Michael received his Ph.D. in Applied Research Psychology from Hofstra University (1991). His dissertation focused on the role that both prior knowledge and personal involvement have with respect to persuasion and with regard to remembering and evaluating message arguments within a TV commercial.
Carl Ravitch
Chief Business Officer
Managing Partner
Carl manages the development of panel studies and syndicated services and oversees the financial operations of Cogenti.
Carl has a rich background in both market research and information technology. He built the Audit Division of Audits & Survey Worldwide, which for many years was the largest privately held Market Research Company in the U.S. and where he was a major stockholder. In addition to running The Audit Division Carl was the CMO and a member of the Board of Directors. He was one of the four member Executive Committee and Research Methods Oversight Committee. Following the companies successful sale he became Divisional President, first at United News and Media and then after another sale to GfK the fourth largest Market Research company in the world. He has built businesses in healthcare, Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health, Optical Products and other Professional Practice areas in addition to Consumer Electronics, Personal Computers and Peripherals, Photographic Products, Mobile Phones, Software, and many others. He has also bought and sold several companies and Divisions for United News and Media and GfK.
He has been elected to The Market Research Council and has spoken at a variety of industry meetings including to Software Developers, the Consumer Electronics Industry and other professional groups. He has written papers on Experimental Techniques in Marketing Research and Distribution and Sales Effectiveness. He has recently completed courses at The Investment Banking Institute and NYU in Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Evaluations and Corporate Environments.
Carl graduated Temple University Magna Cum Laude and was elected a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, the National Honorary Business Fraternity . Carl is an avid runner. He lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and commutes by train to New York City, which makes getting in five to ten mile runs very difficult.
Richard Zucker
Chief Operating Officer
Managing Partner
Richard is responsible for managing business development, developing client online social communities, and participating in the design and development of qualitative research projects.
Richard has a strong and diverse entrepreneurial background in industries that have experienced profound changes to their eco-systems due to rapidly evolving technology and global market forces. His role with various companies focused on business development and marketing in dynamic industry environments, using insights research and market research to help businesses adapt innovative solutions in response to these changing conditions.
He was at the heart of the Brand Integrity, Anti-Counterfeiting and Authentication industry since 1990, beginning as a founding member of Bridgestone Research Technologies, one of its original leading companies. Richard was responsible for developing many anti-fraud, consumer brand and licensed property integrity programs, that have become models for successful brand integrity efforts. Partnered with one of the world's largest market research organizations, Richard helped develop consumer awareness programs to help keep client brands strong, credible and positive. He then became Executive Vice President of DuPont Authentication Systems (a DuPont company), responsible for developing anti-counterfeiting and anti-fraud enterprise solutions for government agencies, consumer products and licensed properties.
Richard than applied his experience and skills to the emerging digital healthcare field and became a founding member of Cogenti. He has been very active in web based health and wellness content sites, teleHealth and teleMedicine, OTC wellness and VMS products as well as pharmaceuticals and healthcare issues of public importance, working to bring together diverse groups of industry and government agencies to find effective and efficient solutions.
Richard has also been responsible for setting up businesses in China, India, Japan and Singapore and has spent substantial time throughout Asia, helping major corporations understand the challenges of moving through these shifting environments in a global market, especially the impact that cultural differences have in this difficult area.
He has traveled extensively throughout the world for both business and pleasure. He runs, reads and with his great love for music, is probably playing his guitar too loud when not engaged in the other two.
Dana Kaminstein Ph.D.
Practice Director:
Organizational Culture
Dana oversees all organizational culture and alignment projects at Cogenti, assisting our healthcare clients moving through acquisitions, mergers and growth. He is a Fellow at the Aresty Institute of Executive Education in The Wharton School and Affiliated Faculty, Organizational Dynamics, in the School of Arts and Sciences. He works with organizations at the group and systems level on topics of leadership, conflict, health, self-reflection, creating learning organizations, life-work balance, and change. For the last several years he has focused on designing senior level executive education programs for companies in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa. His recent research has focused on group-as-a-whole, life-work balance, parallel process and the consultant as container. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sharon Ravitch Ph.D.
Practice Director:
Qualitative Research
Sharon is responsible for guiding the planning and development of our qualitative research projects and its application to organizational culture. Her research integrates across the fields of qualitative research, education, applied development, cultural anthropology, and human development and has three main strands: (1) Practitioner Research as a means to engendering professional and institutional development and innovation; (2) International applied development research that works from participatory and action research approaches (projects currently in the US, Nicaragua, and India); (3) Ethnographic and participatory evaluation research.
She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education where she is a Founding Co-Director of Penn’s Inter-American Educational Leadership Network and serves as the Principal Investigator of Semillas Digitales, a multi-year educational and community development applied research initiative in partnership with the Seeds for Progress Foundation in Nicaragua. She is Research Co-Director at the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives.
Sharon has published three books: Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (with Matthew Riggan, Sage Publications, 2012); School Counseling Principles: Diversity and Multiculturalism (American School Counselor Association Press, 2006) and Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth (with Michael Nakkula, Jossey-Bass, 1998). She is working on her fourth book, Qualitative Research in Context: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological (Sage Publications, expected 2015).
Sharon earned two master’s degrees from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and in Education and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in an interdisciplinary program that combined anthropology, sociology, and education.