Growing up playing various musical instruments and participating in musical bands, Kerry Edelstein developed an empathy for artists. The market research guru and UCLA Anderson School of Management alumna said she wanted to work in the media and entertainment businesses, but she wasn’t going to make it as a professional performer.
Still, she needed an outlet for her passion for music and arts, which she found in market research in the entertainment and media industry.
Edelstein grew up in Rochester, N. Y., and obtained her bachelors degree in statistics at Cornell University. She was intrigued by the idea of using research from surveys to learn about industries after taking a course there.
Attending graduate school at UCLA wasn’t a premeditated plan but a yearned-for intellectual boost after working for three years.
“It was the right (decision) in that moment,” Edelstein said. “I needed to challenge myself.”
After graduating from the School of Management, Edelstein co-founded filmBUZZ, conducting media research for film companies for a year and a half. Then she switched to working on similar projects at other companies, due to financial difficulties at filmBuzz.
In 2011, Edelstein founded Research Narrative, a market research and consulting firm focusing on conducting media content and advertising research.
Part of the foundation of Edelstein’s career is the understanding of business she learned at the School of Management, including the broad concepts of market research and the ethics of the business, Edelstein said.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t use (the concepts from my education), as a business owner,” she said.
Jordan McLoughlin, a research analyst at Edelstein’s firm who graduated from UCLA in 2009, met Edelstein in a dance class he taught as an undergraduate at UCLA. He said Edelstein’s ability to muster up all her energy and resources to work under high pressure is inspiring.
“It’s amazing to see someone who can output a lot of energy in a short time,” McLoughlin said.
Edelstein said she sometimes thinks about going back and retaking classes to reinforce the groundwork. Sometimes she does come back, not as a student but as a guest lecturer.
Simon Board, an associate professor of economics at UCLA, became friends with Edelstein a few years ago and invited her to lecture on online marketing at his Economics 160T: “The Economics of E-commerce and Technology” class. He said he appreciated Edelstein’s fresh perspective as a media researcher and her real-life story of launching a business.
Other times, Edelstein comes back to the campus to visit Ackerman Union, the place she said she misses the most. She said she is attracted to the energy of the student groups around Ackerman.
Edelstein also returns for alumni events at the School of Management to reunite with her classmates and look for opportunities to collaborate with them. She said her fondest memories of UCLA involve the general upbeat atmosphere created by her ambitious and humorous classmates.