Our Leadership

Craig is President of Charney Research, a market research and strategy firm specializing in global markets. He has over 25 years’ experience in more than 45 countries. “Craig is one of the few people who can field solid market research just about anywhere, including notoriously difficult to research countries like China, Vietnam, India,” say former AMA-NY President Randy Ringer of Verse. He is an expert in marketing and communication strategy development. He understands global markets from every angle, having worked on international marketing, development, and security issues.

Craig began his career setting up Nelson Mandela’s polling team in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, and became lead analyst for Bill Clinton’s re-election bid in 1996. He set up his firm in 1997, racking up a series of firsts, ranging from Afghanistan’s first poll to the first national B2B omnibus in China to a 15-country marketing study on farmed fish targeting consumers, vendors, and producers. He has worked for leading multinationals and ad agencies, including Alcoa, Monsanto, Honda, LG, FCB, Skype, and Nokia, as well as the Financial Times, ABC News, the World Bank, and the Voice of America.

Before establishing the firm, Craig earned a doctorate in political science at Yale, where he taught African political economy, a Sorbonne diploma in sociology of development, specializing in West Africa, and an M.Phil. from Oxford in politics. He has published widely in leading news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek, as well as in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and belongs to the American Association for Public Opinion Research. His 2005 Afghanistan poll for ABC news won a prize for best news poll of the year from the University of Iowa Journalism School.