Kylee Lessard did not come up through a traditional research path, and that shapes how she approaches insights today. After roles in content, product marketing, and an interim chief of staff position, she stepped into leading insights and strategy for LinkedIn’s advertising business with a clear view of the problem: research was happening everywhere, but decision-makers lacked a single, trusted source of synthesis. In this episode of The Curiosity Current, Kylee explains how she helped move LinkedIn from scattered, ad-hoc research toward a more centralized insights model that leaders could rely on. She walks through her practical playbook: starting with a stakeholder listening tour, defining and socializing a clear charter, and creating early wins that built credibility quickly. One of those wins was democratizing access to research through a shared repository and consistent insight-sharing cadence, reducing duplication and misalignment. Kylee also explains how the team anchored research to real decision moments by aligning insights to biannual planning cycles and introducing a recurring market report that synthesizes customer, competitive, and market intelligence at different levels of detail for different audiences. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes that the core challenge today is no longer data scarcity, but separating signal from noise. The episode closes with practical examples of how AI supports competitive intelligence and internal awareness, and clear advice for early-career professionals on building influence by staying close to customers and tying insights directly to business outcomes.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to move from fragmented research to a trusted insights system
• A practical framework for standing up an enterprise insights function
• How to align research with real planning and decision cycles
• Why signal vs noise is now the central insights challenge
• How AI supports market and customer awareness without replacing judgment
• How to build strategic influence by connecting insight to business outcomes

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Episode Resources:

• Kylee Lessard on LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Website
• Stephanie Vance on LinkedIn
• The Curiosity Current: A Market Research Podcast on Apple Podcasts
• The Curiosity Current: A Market Research Podcast on Spotify
• The Curiosity Current: A Market Research Podcast on YouTube
  
  

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