ABOUT US
Meet the EthniFacts Leadership Team.
Mike Lakusta
CEO
Starting his CPG career at Procter & Gamble in 1979, Mike has worked in multiple senior management and marketing roles during his career at E&J Gallo and within the beverage industry. In his recent role as SVP of International Business Development & Multicultural Marketing for a multibillion dollar beverage company, Mike worked with and advised many major beverage suppliers both domestically & internationally. His service on industry & inter-industry multicultural committees confirmed the common frustration with lack of available research and actionable insights that led to the founding of EthniFacts. Mike's passion for providing predictive insights is matched by his passion for wine and keeping up with his family & 2 globetrotting sons.
Dr. Carlos Arce
Chief Methodologist
Since 1973, Carlos has conducted research and policy analysis on Hispanic quality of life and well-being; immigrant experiences; and consumption patterns in the Hispanic Market. After a 15-year academic research career, Carlos founded and led several research consultancies, including NuStats and DataSource, both now owned by PTV AG of Karlsruhe, Germany; and Geostats, a geospatial consulting company in Atlanta. He chairs the PepsiCo Latino Advisory Board. A native to Mexico, Carlos is a University of California (Berkeley) graduate and has a doctorate from the University of Michigan.
Ashley Thompson
Director of Statistical Services
Ashley is an Associate Professor and the Associate Psychology Department Head at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is also the Research Director at Quantistat Solutions. Ashley’s research broadly relates to the investigation of group processes and stigma facing those of marginalized identities. With over a decade of experience in behavioral research, she regularly provides professional, methodological, and statistical consulting to support a variety of diversity-focused organizations and researchers. Her expertise encompasses psychometrics, the handling of large data sets, model selection, estimation, and a wide variety of quantitative methods/statistics. She received her Ph.D. in Experimental and Quantitative Psychology from the University of New Brunswick (Canada).
Rachel Willhite
Market Research Manager & Data Analyst
Dr. Glenn Cordúa
Chief Assets Officer
Glenn founded and directs the Wine & Spirits Management Institute in the Conrad Hilton College of the University of Houston. Cordua previously co-founded Cordua Restaurant Group, which operates Churrascos, Americas, Artista and Amazon Grill in Houston. Cordua has been active in behavioral research since 1974, and his current work focuses on responsible promotion and service on premise. A native to Nicaragua, Cordua is a Millsaps College graduate, with a doctorate from the University of Mississippi, and a residency in Clinical Psychology from Brown University Medical School.
Guy Garcia
President, New Mainstream Initiatives
Award-winning author, Internet entrepreneur and a noted commentator on social and demographic trends. Guy is the author of the novels, Skin Deep (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Obsidian Sky (Simon & Schuster). Garcia’s nonfiction books include, The New Mainstream (Harper Collins), which was hailed as a prescient wake up call and road map to the new multicultural reality in America, and The Decline of Men (Harper Collins), which mapped the mutation of gender roles in the post-feminist age. A three-time National Magazine Awards judge, Garcia is an Edward Albee Fellow, a member of PEN, and the Executor of the Literary Estate of Carlos Fuentes. Self Made, written in conjunction with Nely Galan, was published by Random House in April 2016.
Garcia was a co-founder and Editorial Director of Total New York, a city web site that pioneered the use of geo-based interactive content, live webcasting and virtual avatar environments. Total New York was sold to America Online in 1997. As a Vice President for Content and Programming at AOL, Garcia worked on the development of AOL International, AOL Music, and launched the first iteration of AOL Latino.
A contributor to the Huffington Post, the National Journal, PBS and NPR, Garcia and his work have appeared in Time magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Vanity Fair, Ad Age, The Financial Times, the Times of London, ABC, Univision, CNBC, and CNN. He is a frequent speaker and participant at such events as the New Generation Consortium at the Time Warner Center in New York, the Harvard Kennedy Center and Law, Policy and Business Conference in Cambridge, the Disney Ideation Summit in Los Angeles, and the South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin.
Receiving degrees in psychology, statistics, and mathematics from the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), Rachel's interest in combining data analytics and human behavior led her to joining EthniFacts. She applies her interdisciplinary knowledge to gather high-quality data and uncover novel insights as she oversees quantitative and qualitative fieldwork covering a wide variety of topics. When not working, Rachel enjoys yoga, reading, crocheting, spending time with her cats, and also volunteers time working in multiple labs at UMD as a research assistant.