Our Mission
Relations Research exists to help individuals, business leaders and organizations enjoy more relationship successes and fewer relations failures, headaches and disappointments.
Business strategies succeed or fail based on the strength of their relational underpinnings.
We are a professional services firm that's cultivating a new paradigm of organizational relations that delivers more accountability, resiliency, productivity, and enthusiastic ownership to your mission and strategies.
Our Story
Our story began many years ago with a team determined to fundamentally improve workplaces and relations within. This innovation initiative lead to the development and maturation of an applied science and tools for diagnosing, designing, forming, managing and improving any crucial business relationship.
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Relations Research’s work resides upon a foundation of substantive research and development, and has been battle-tested in customer engagements across a spectrum of organizations from complex healthcare organizations, large-scale retail, manufacturing operations, governmental agencies and technology firms.
Experienced Leadership
Rendi Black
Rendi leads Client Relations. She has over 30 years experience as a business owner and executive leader for a Fortune 40 company. Rendi was branded as a turn-around market leader growing revenue in highly competitive and dynamic marketplaces. She has substantial experience in creating strategies to grow underperforming and challenging markets, building cross functional support teams, data analytics, the creation of innovative tests, systems and processes while creating high performing teams. She joined Relations Research to leverage her experience and passion in serving leaders and organizations to be even more successful with their most critical stakeholders.
Rendi enjoys spending time with her family raising longhorns and riding her horse on the family ranch in Texas.
She received her BS in education from the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Ben Williams
Ben leads Client Relations in the Upper MIdwest. He has a proven track record spearheading impactful initiatives for multiple organizations across sectors to improve performance and organizational impact. He has demonstrated expertise in driving innovation, fostering collaboration, and strategically aligning organizations. Before joining Relations Research, he spent over 12 years facilitating dynamic change strategies and directing collaborative projects to address emerging organizational, partner, and community opportunities.
Ben enjoys balancing fatherhood with an active lifestyle of mountain biking, creative endeavors, and tackling home improvement projects with his wife.
Ben graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with degrees in marketing, management & human resources and psychology and received his Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Dawn Wells
Dawn has extensive experience helping organizations understand themselves and the people they serve. Her work is driven by a belief that understanding people and the cultural assumptions that shape their behavior is key to policy improvement and better organizational functioning. Dawn has worked as an international consultant in the NGO sector, and as a business anthropologist at Colgate-Palmolive, where she received two patents for innovation. Her research focus has included people-centered innovation in CPGs, US immigration law, refugee services, and organizational alliance-building.
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Dawn received her PhD in Cultural Anthroplogy at Rutgers University.
Kimberly Evans
Kimberly serves as the CEO of Relations Research. Across her career, she’s enjoyed leadership roles in a number of entrepreneurial ventures. Kimberly is passionate about helping customers be more successful in the execution of their strategies and in finding creative solutions to complex needs and challenges with customer, supplier and workforce stakeholders. She has extensive experience advising clients across many different industry sectors such as big box retail, healthcare, insurance, and manufacturing, and leading client implementation teams around business relationship design and stewardship, strategy execution, change leadership, innovation, organization design and development, and cultural transformations. In her downtime, Kimberly enjoys adventure travel, cooking, reading, and watching her son play soccer.
Kimberly is a proud Hokie, having received her masters and undergrad engineering degrees at VA Tech.
Danny McCall
Danny is the original CEO, founder, inventor, and thought leader of Relations Research; Relations Research is the brainchild of Danny’s work. Danny has led research and development in the betterment of workplace relationships since the late 1980s. During this period of diligent investigation, he’s made many important discoveries leading to extensive new bodies of knowledge known as Work Role Yields Management™ and Durable Relationship Operating Principles™. His inventions and innovative methods have grown into solutions for both organizations and working persons through a variety of business initiatives.
During his eclectic career, Danny has held many leadership and founding positions resting upon a broad foundation of personal experience inclusive of information systems, psychometrics, computer hardware and software, digital interactive photography, digital user interface, heavy truck engineering, commercial sales management, energy, industrial motors and control systems and military intelligence technologies. He holds various patents and has been honored with numerous awards. A few examples: North Carolina Entrepreneur of the Year, Herrmann International's Big Thinker, Discover Magazine's annual "Discover Award", the US Department of Energy's national award for energy innovation and Human Resource Executive magazine's national top award for human resources product innovation. His background encompasses corporate, entrepreneurial, government and community service activities in private and government sectors within large and small organizational environments. Danny is the author of Work Role Yields Management, Career Fulcrum, Talent Steward Primer, Work's A We Thing and Hiring Wisdom.
Robb Dean
Robb serves as the Chief Product Officer of Relations Research and has over 25 years of achievements in leading and inspiring creative and technical teams to develop innovative design solutions, from broad concept development through implementation. He has comprehensive experience in strategy, design, development, advertising, marketing and communications.
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He received his BS in Communications from the University of Tennessee.
Kip Fanta
Kip applies his passion and expertise in Business Relationship Management (BRM) and Global Business Services/Shared Services to advise Relations Research’s clients. He’s worked with organizations around the world (including Nestle, L’Oreal, PepsiCo, Diageo, Kaiser Permanente, Walmart, LDC, and Campbells) in their BRM and GBS/Shared Services implementations. He is a Master of Business Relationship Manager (MBRM), Knowledge Provider with BRM Institute, and an Advisor with Inixia. Kip spent 25 years in various leadership roles within the IT and Shared Services organization within Procter & Gamble (P&G).
Kip was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and earned his BS degree in Mathematics/Statistics from Miami University. He then completed his Masters at The Ohio State University in Industrial & System Engineering. He is married, has two grown children and lives in Naples, Florida.
U. Ejiro Onomake
Ejiro has extensive experience as a business anthropologist and insights researcher. At Relations Research Ejiro leads our multicultural women, and AAPI programs and research in our partnership with The Center for Asian Pacific American Women and their corporate sponsors. Ejiro has worked across industries in business, education, and NGOs, for over 20 years in four continents. She has consulted for the United Nations, African Union, Fortune 500, as well as startups. Ejiro also worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Her career has primarily focused on leadership, mentorship, international business and entrepreneurship development, market research, human-centered design, and client engagement.
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Ejiro received her PhD in Anthroplogy from The University of Sussex
Elizabeth Briody
Elizabeth has been involved in organizational effectiveness and organizational change efforts for over 30 years – first at General Motors Research and later through her own consulting practice. Her role at Relations Research involves helping us attract world-class human science talent and lending her experience and expertise to clients. She’s worked with clients in healthcare, petrochemicals, aerospace, manufacturing, consumer products, military, and service industries.
Elizabeth is Secretary of the American Anthropology Association, and the author of over 50 journal articles and 5 books. She received the a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Applied Anthropology in 2020.
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Elizabeth received her PhD in Anthroplogy from The University of Texas at Austin.
Jason Goss
Jason Goss leads Technologies at Relations Research, where he’s responsible for new application development, maintaining and evolving existing software applications, and working with various IT partners. Jason brings deep experience and expertise in corporate environments such as PPG Industries, Eaton and US Steel as well as in entrepreneurial companies. Jason combines business acumen with technical expertise, and has degrees in computer science, business management and accounting.