Sam McNerney

Last summer, I downloaded every email I’ve sent or received since 2009, the year I signed up for Gmail.com.

This dot is my Gmail account. As you scroll, the people in my inbox—and the email connections between them—will appear around it.

I’m going to use that trail to tell the story of my résumé, pulling out a few emails where the plot changes.

This black dot represents my personal Gmail account.

Each gray dot is a person or business I’ve emailed with.

Our story starts in 2011, the year I graduated.

After I graduated, I moved to NYC and started a blog dedicated to popular psychology.

A year in, more than 30,000 people a month were reading it, and the New York Times column "The Stone" cited it.

I was even published in Scientific American.

Meanwhile, I got my first taste of agency life: a three-month internship at BBH.

But it was the blog that got me a real job: Executive Editor of 250 Words at Simon & Schuster, a site serving a daily dose of business wisdom from smart nonfiction books.

I interviewed people like Arianna Huffington and Andrew Yang. But nine months in, 7,000 email subscribers wasn't enough for S&S, and they shut it down.

Then S&S shut it down. (twist 1: the cut)

A few months later, a family friend put me in touch with someone at Publicis, and I got a job there.

Around then, a friend of mine, a psychology professor at Columbia, showed me how to run surveys and experiments online. I've been hooked ever since.

Over the next five years, I hired a second behavioral scientist, and together we built three research tools, Prospect, Crosshairs, and Madeleine, which teams used across Publicis Groupe.

I helped grow existing accounts by selling quant solutions to Walmart, Oral-B, Citibank, and Swiffer.

By then, I was the go-to quant person for new-business pitches—using surveys and experiments to support strategy on pitches for HPE, Volkswagen, Hilton, Subway, Nutella, Emirates, Champion and others.

Placeholder.

Then, in 2019, Publicis bought the data company Epsilon, and my department went from 25 people to zero. I was on paternity leave, and the day before it ended, I was let go.

Next came what felt like a dream job. Flamingo, an Omnicom qual agency, hired me to launch its North American practice and push into quant.

My first day was the first day of lockdown. About two months later, I was let go.

About two months later, I was let go.

It was the middle of Covid, and nobody was hiring. So I picked up a few freelance projects.

That's when a second black dot appears: sam@sammcnerney.com, the address I set up for that work.

And I loved it. One early client, Hydrant, a daily hydration mix, used my research to decide which benefits went on its pack and to pitch investors.

Eventually, I stopped looking for a job. I went all in and launched McNerney Insights & Marketing.

Cleo, a London personal finance app expanding into the US, kept me on for three years to track its brand.

I've partnered with Giant Spoon more than a dozen times, including on research that helped win Olipop's business.

With Shepherd, I ran a multi-year statewide survey behind Texas's water security campaign and presented the findings to state leadership. We did the same for Austin's light rail.

Back in 2011, I loved being inside an agency. Lately, my best work has happened inside agencies anyway.

I'm ready to go back in.