Ryan Hand Email and Phone Number

The VI team develops and conducts original research via varying methodologies to gain in-depth understanding of prospective buyer and user experiences, unmet needs, and motivations; inform MVP product features and design; and, size market opportunities and ideal targets. These insights feed business innovation and strategic decision making across ideation, development, and launch.

Leveraged mixed-methods research to gain an in-depth understanding of our target market to feed GTM, product, sales, and design decisions.

Worked on multiple research focus areas leveraging mixed methodology research approaches. Studies included impact of racially-targeted food and beverage advertisements on the dietary choices, qualitative nutritional content analyses, and the impact of sports and it's impact on targeted groups.

Managed launch of #GiveHealthy campaign, a national online campaign disrupting the physical donation of canned processed foods for healthy produce alternatives. Throughout this I created and managed partnerships with influencers, ambassadors, drive organizers, and hunger organizations. Created social media toolkit, PR toolkit, hunger organization toolkit, drive toolkit, and ambassador toolkit. Successfully partnered with 50 hunger organizations.

While at AeroFarms, I conducted competitor research of the micro-greens industry, audited all competitor products, specifically focused on nutrition panel, the nutrition and health claims, messaging, branding and positioning. Lastly, I provided leadership with qualitative analysis of social media marketing strategies by competitors.

While at Columbia I worked on four studies; Minority Breast Cancer Survivors and Nutritional Intervention Study, Feeding Issues Among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Study, Benefits and Drawback of Participating in Local Food Systems Study and at the Laurie M Tisch Center for Edible Schoolyard NYC.

Positive Youth Development and Sexual Health Promotion Research - Assisted with the center’s research synthesis project specifically analyzing topic-focused literature review on a variety of subjectsTeen Dating Violence, Intimate Partner Violence, and Adolescent Health Research - Assisted with two empirical research projects looking at psychological aggression in teen dating relationships- Served as a note-taker and transcriptionists on a focus group project, and assisted with a systematic literature reviewHealth Care Disparities Research – Samuel Beck, PhD- Explored the nature of disparities in health related facilities in NYP hospitals and in North Brooklyn communities. Specifically research was conducted through ethnographic fieldwork.Cover Africa- Cover Africa was founded on the initiative of taking a more active role in the prevention of a disease that takes the life of one African child every thirty seconds – malaria- Our team conducted ethnographic research observing the behavior of populations in Ghana to gain an understanding of how to create a sustainable malaria intervention strategy