Namika Sagara, Ph.D.
President, Consultant, Behavioral Scientist
Namika Sagara, Ph.D. is a behavioral scientist with 15 years of experience in leading and managing Behavioral Science and decision-making research. Besides conducting rigorous academic research, she applies decades of proven academic insights to help her clients understand and guide irrational human behaviors. She is also an award-winning international speaker and has experience presenting in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to various audiences, ranging from C-level executives to junior marketing professionals. She was a Founder and President of Behavioral Science Center at one of the largest global Market Research company. She also was a visiting scholar at Duke University and has taught marketing as well as psychology courses. Dr. Sagara received her B.S. and M.S. in Psychology and Ph.D. in Marketing from University of Oregon, and was a Post Doctoral Associate at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Her consulting clients include large corporations such as Allianz Global Investors and General Reinsurance as well as smaller companies (e.g., Market Research firms, Medical Staffing Companies, Law firms).
Evelyn Yau, M.S.
Sr. BeSci Analyst
Evelyn Yau, Senior BeSci Analyst, joins Sagara Consulting with a strong passion to apply the Behavioral Sciences (BeSci) to real-world business challenges. Her interests lie in bridging the gap between academia and industry research to help people achieve positive and sustained behavioral change. Prior to joining the team, she has worked at different market research firms conducting research and synthesizing large amounts of data into actionable insights for her clients. Her clients and work represent a variety of sectors, including CPG, Tech, Financial Services, and more.
She received her MSc in Economics and Psychology from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and her BA in Economics and her BA In Psychology from UC San Diego.
Partners:
George Newman, Ph.D.
Academic Partner | Yale Professor
George Newman is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Management at the Yale School of Management. He also holds affiliated appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Cognitive Science at Yale University.
He is an expert in consumer behavior and consumer decision-making. His recent work focuses on questions related to the concepts of authenticity, identity and the self. He has published more than 50 articles in leading scholarly journals and his research has been featured in popular media outlets such as The New York Times, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. He has led seminars on various marketing and management topics for senior executives in North America and Asia.
Jeff Parker, Ph.D.
Academic Partner | University of Illinois Professor
Jeff is an Associate Professor of Marketing at University of Illinois at Chicago and an academic partner for Behavioral Science Group.
His research examines a spectrum of theoretical (e.g., causal reasoning and judgment, mental accounting, mental representations, and choice architecture) and substantive (e.g., food choices, brand attitudes, collaborative consumption, and responsibility judgments) topics. His work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, among others, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and Women's Health, to name a few.
Eesha Sharma, Ph.D.
Academic Partner | Dartmouth Professor
Eesha Sharma is a behavioral scientist and Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. She earned a BSc in Finance and Marketing, an MPhil, and a PhD in Marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business. Prior to academia, she worked as an investment banking analyst in the Financial Institutions Group (FIG) at Goldman Sachs.
Professor Sharma’s research revolves around consumer financial wellbeing, and how psychology and marketing can be used to understand and improve it. She is particularly interested in how people react to perceived resource constraints—both in their own lives and in the lives of others. Using a combination of behavioral experiments and field studies, she examines topics such as: how people behave when they feel poor, why people give to charity, and what factors may improve and/or worsen consumer financial decision making. Professor Sharma’s research has been published in leading journals such as Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and it has received attention at media outlets such as Forbes, The Huffington Post, International Business Times, Marketplace, Men’s Health, The New Yorker, Psychology Today, Science Daily, and Vanity Fair.