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Medill names Senior Lecturer Jonathan Copulsky as Executive Director of the Medill Spiegel Research Center

Position charged with leading research on the relationship between customer engagement and purchase behavior

Headshot photo of Jonathan Copulsky
Jonathan Copulsky, Executive Director of the Medill Spiegel Research Center

Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications has selected Senior Lecturer Jonathan Copulsky as Executive Director of the Medill Spiegel Research Center, which conducts evidence-based, data-driven analysis to prove the relationship between customer engagement and purchase behavior. The center has conducted significant research on proving the financial impact of consumer behavior in social media, mobile devices, customer reviews and more.

Copulsky has over 40 years of experience as a marketing leader and has taught in Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications program since 2015. In addition to his work at Medill, Copulsky serves as the director for Kellogg’s Executive Education program in Business Marketing Strategy.

“I am excited for Jonathan to take the helm at the Spiegel Center,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “He has been a talented instructor at Medill and his experience in the industry  provides him with keen insights that will be  invaluable assets to the center’s mission. Those insights paired with his experience make him the perfect person to direct the research being done at Spiegel and I look forward to seeing what the center will accomplish under his leadership.”

Just prior to joining Northwestern, Copulsky was a senior client service principal at Deloitte. There, in addition to working with leading global clients on marketing strategy projects, he led Deloitte’s global research and publishing activities and corporate citizenship program. He also served as Deloitte Consulting’s chief marketing officer, with a focus on re-branding and repositioning the firm in the U.S.

Before joining Deloitte as a principal in 1997, Copulsky served five years as the chief marketing and sales officer at CCH Incorporated, a leading NYSE-listed professional publisher and software provider.

“What’s exciting about the work that we are doing at the Spiegel Center is that we are able to analyze on a tremendous scale how customers engage with brands and how that engagement shapes the purchases they make,” said Copulsky. “I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to lead the center and continue the really cutting-edge research that we are conducting.”

The Spiegel Research initiative was founded in 2011 by a gift from the late Professor Emeritus Edward J. "Ted" Spiegel and his wife Audrey, and fortified by the support of corporations, alumni and friends as part of Northwestern University’s long tradition of applied research focused on advertising and marketing.

In 2014, the initiative became the first research center at Medill following additional gifts from the estate of Ted Spiegel and was subsequently renamed the Medill IMC Spiegel Digital & Database Research Center.

Medill Associate Professor Tom Collinger served as the founding executive director of the center from 2011 until his retirement earlier this year.