Senior Vice President, Global Insights and Analytics
Resident Expert Rochelle Wainer, Ph.D.
Meet our award-winning in-house expert on early childhood development. She brings more than 25 years of experience working across different countries, industries, retailers, and brands including PepsiCo., Netflix, The Children’s Place, Jell-O, Dannon, Starbucks, and Mattel.
Rochelle joined Kids2 in 2017 to launch, lead, and grow the global insights team that now spans 5 segments of research: consumer insights, product insights, shopper insights, category insights, and analytics.
Today, this world-class team helps to shape how we design every product for Baby Einstein™, Ingenuity™, and Bright Starts™ brands.
Insights-Driven Design
See how science, research, and expertise help bring our products to life
Read on for a peek behind the expert's curtain to see how we uncover solutions that are important to parents, and product designs that captivate and charm children ages zero to two, one brand at a time.
Baby Einstein
Baby Einstein is guided by The Einstein Way, a unique learning philosophy backed by science and built from the best childhood development research.
The Einstein Way
Inspired by Albert Einstein
Yes, that Einstein.
Albert Einstein's parents valued curiosity above all else, and he has credited them as important influences in his lifelong quest to understand how the world works. They nurtured his natural sense of wonder and desire to discover. They – like all parents – were his first teachers.
Baby Einstein is founded on these principles and the belief that curiosity powers discoveries, inspires creativity, and fuels individual exploration.
Our research tells us that much like Albert Einstein's parents, today's parents who think curiosity is more important than ever look to and trust the Baby Einstein brand to help meet developmental milestones, foster creative thinking, stimulate the senses, and inspire curiosity.
The Einstein Way
The Einstein Way
For parents who put a premium on real-world experiences and raising a well-rounded child, you might identify with a deep desire to give your kids every educational opportunity – from Montessori-inspired tummy time mirrors to STEM- or STEAM-based building blocks, cause-and-effect toys, and more ways to stimulate their developing senses.
You delight when your little one asks "why" and pride yourself on giving them space to develop at their own speed.
As Albert Einstein said, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
The 5 Core Design Principles of Curiosity Behind Every Baby Einstein Product
Ingenuity
The Ingenuity Baby brand is guided by The Ingenuity Way, a purposeful design philosophy backed by science and built from the best childhood development research.
The Ingenuity Way
Because every parenting journey is unique
Driven by the idea that encouragement and support, rather than instruction and judgment, give parents like you the confidence and space you need to decide what's right for your family, Ingenuity wants to equip families with the tools to thrive together every day.
Our research revealed that nearly 50% of parents say they feel like they don’t get enough support, especially when overwhelmed or stressed (which is when we need it most!).
That, along with some universal truths such as wanting to give your baby the best, happiest life, helped us define The Ingenuity Way which is centered around encouragement yet firmly grounded in 4 areas of science: the user experience, fostering bonding, supporting brain development, and drawing inspiration from nature.
The Einstein Way
All the encouragement. None of the judgment.
You aim for perfection, and let's be honest, you're killing it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't take work. Whether you’re on your first child or your fifth, modern parenthood can feel like a pressure cooker of endless decisions. And you’re not alone.
Studies show that 9 out of 10 parents feel judged for their parenting decisions. This astonishing figure reinforces a key component of The Ingenuity Way – the idea that just like in nature, there is no one-size-fits-all formula for your family. And it follows the practice of "biomimicry,” an approach to innovation that combines sustainability with ergonomic design, intuitive patterns and functions, and strategies for soothing that are already found in nature.
Ingenuity understands and is here to give you the encouragement you need and the products your family needs. We got you.
The 5 Core Design Principles of Encouragement Behind Every Ingenuity Product
Bright Starts
The Bright Starts Way is a specialized product design approach centered on finding more moments that spark joy yet stays firmly grounded in science and the best childhood development research.
The Bright Starts Way
Less worry. More joy.
The Bright Starts Way is a philosophy grounded in science and built from the latest childhood development research on 4 core areas: mindfulness, user-centric design, brain development, and emotional development, all centered around one goal: finding more joy.
Our research shines a light on the science behind joy’s proven impact on our psychological well-being. Surrounding ourselves with sights, sounds, colors, and textures that bring joy can literally improve our state of mind. This is why children’s hospitals paint their walls with bright colors and playful patterns.
Bright Starts understands that you have a lot on your plate, but that doesn’t mean you have to choose between your to-do list and experiencing joy. Small moments like splashing in puddles, blowing bubbles, and all the giggles can have a big, lasting impact on children and their parents.
The Einstein Way
The juggle is real.
Our research also tells us that for some parents, juggling concerns about safety and making ends meet are a major influence in what they choose to purchase for their families.
If this sounds familiar, you might relate to what it feels like to want to choose items for your children that are first and foremost safe and affordable. But once those basic needs are met, you're all about focusing on the fun and bringing joy into their lives.
Bright Starts and our partner brands, which include Disney Baby, Ford, and Sesame Street – to name a few – are like a trusted friend, helping you connect and find More joy in every moment.™
The 5 Core Design Principles of Joy Behind Every Bright Starts Product
"Encouraging your child’s curiosity today will cultivate their confidence, creativity and discovery for tomorrow"
"The work I’m doing professionally helps me contribute to building communities where children can learn and thrive and parents’ lives are made a little easier. I feel grateful that my personal and professional align and help make a difference in the world to move the lives of families forward." -Dr. Rochelle Wainer
About Rochelle
Rochelle Wainer is Senior Vice President of Global Insights for Kids2, LLC, a global consumer goods company headquartered in Atlanta that designs solutions to help early-stage families including the leading infant, baby, and toddler brands Baby Einstein™, Bright Starts™, and Ingenuity™. She came to Kids2 in 2017 to launch and lead the global insights department.
Wainer has a history of developing actionable consumer and shopper insights that lead to successful programs, new products, and opportunities through first-class research expertise in both qualitative and quantitative methods. She has more than 25 years of experience working across different countries, industries, and companies. She’s worked with PepsiCo, Netflix, The Children’s Place, Jell-O, Dannon, Starbucks, and Mattel, which allowed her to incorporate her love of toys with her expertise in child development and consumer research.
A trained child and developmental psychologist, Wainer is a recognized expert in child development, youth and family insights, and consumer psychology. Her passion lies in applying family psychology to the real world which she first started to practice in grad school, when she became interested in consumer psychology and began consulting and moderating for local companies.
She is an experienced presenter at corporate and industry events and her specialties include youth marketing and research, mom and family marketing, consumer psychology, qualitative and quantitative research, moderating, turning shopper insights into action, foodservice insights, sports marketing research, strategic planning, trend tracking and forecasting.
She earned her Bachelor of Arts at the State University of New York at Albany and her Master's and Ph.D. from The University of Connecticut. Her research passion is applying family psychology to the real world.
Originally from New York, she lives in in Atlanta, GA with her husband, 3 boys, and 2 beagles.
Q&A with Rochelle Wainer, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Global Insights and Analytics at Kids2
Why does Kids2 have a global insights team?
At Kids2, our mission is to make parenthood a little easier, one tiny win at a time. Our team supports that mission by gathering insights on what matters most to our consumers – the babies and the parents. Essentially our job is to represent the voice of our consumers and shoppers in all that we do at Kids2.
What does a global insights team do?
Our team supports every function here at Kids2 across the globe. There are 5 key areas of research that represent the majority of our work:
1. Consumer insights – understand the wants and needs of our core consumers – parents and children from newborns to toddlers and how this evolves with each year and generation.
2. Child Development Expertise – I use my training in child and developmental psychology to help with our learning philosophies and other milestone insights and bring in experts as needed.
3. Shopper insights – determine the path to purchase for parents, gift givers, and prenatal/registry to optimize the shopper experience.
4. Category and product insights – provide inspiration and evaluation for our product development team to optimize our portfolio of products.
5. Analytics – track trends in market performance for brands, categories and items in stores and online for Kids2 and competitors.
Where do you get your data?
We have experts on our team for each area of insights and work with the best vendor network in the business. We have built a toolbox to help answer any questions to support Kids2 development of the best product, content, and programs to support our retailers, shoppers and consumers.We have a proprietary knowledge management tool we call “The Vault” that helps us to share all of our insights with our team and external partners.
How does Kids2 use insights to design baby and toddler toys and gear for Baby Einstein, Ingenuity, and Bright Starts brands?
Through market research conducted all throughout the world, we learn what matters to parents most, what will provide the greatest benefit to children – whether that be learning, entertainment, or soothing–we synthesize that information into useful, actionable takeaways for our design engineers and product development teams to use in making new products and media content for our brands.
From concept to launch, these insights become part of every step of a product's development as it progresses from an idea to something you can see, play with, put baby in, listen to, or watch.
But it's not all about the baby (OK it’s mostly about the baby) because it’s also about the parents, grandparents, and gift givers who want to know they’re choosing the right solution for their needs.