Diane Hessan

(Posted on Thursday, February 25, 2021)

Diane Hessan is an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator in the market research field, and a nationally recognized expert on the American voter. Since 2016, she has been engaged in an in-depth, longitudinal study of the electorate, looking for trends, shifts, and common ground. She has written more than 50 columns about her findings for the Boston Globe, and her work has also been featured on CNN and NPR and in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, and many other outlets.

She is the founder and Chairman of C Space, formerly called Communispace, which was the first company to leverage social media to help companies get insight and inspiration from their consumers. Diane was CEO of the company during 14 years of exponential growth, as C Space worked with hundreds of global brands across twelve countries. She has been honored as a disruptor in the market research industry because of her work in conducting breakthrough research via the internet. Diane recently consolidated all of her investment and advisory work into a new company called Salient Ventures, which helps accelerate the next generation of startup companies in tech.

She serves on the boards of Panera, Eastern Bank, Brightcove, Schlesinger Group, Mass Challenge, Tufts University, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 2017, the Boston Globe appointed her to its editorial board. Diane has received many honors, including the Pinnacle Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Most Admired CEO award and Boston Power 50 awards from the Boston Business Journal, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, the Northstar Award from Springboard, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year. She has been inducted into the Babson College Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs, and she received the Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship from Brandeis University.

Diane previously co-authored the book Customer-Centered Growth: Five Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage, a Business Week best seller that was published in eleven languages.

She received a BA in economics and English from Tufts University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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