A look at the people behind the numbers in area business:
Brian Numainville
retail feedback group
Title: Principal
Age: 45
Brian Numainville, a veteran research and public relations executive and cause marketing specialist, is helping grocers listen to customers as a principal of Retail Feedback Group.
Joining Retail Feedback Group builds on Numainville's industry experience — he worked at Nash Finch Co. for 18 years — and returns him to the kind of family-owned business where he worked earlier in his career.
"Retail Feedback Group is a 40-year-old family-owned business, and that means a lot to me," said Numainville, the first nonfamily member to be named a principal of the company. "It's also an opportunity for me to take all of the research, public relations and nonprofit work I've done to use while working with our clients and growing the business."
Numainville most recently was senior director of research and public relations at Nash Finch and chairman of its NFC Foundation. In that role, he launched cause marketing campaigns, including Feeding Imagination, which has generated donations of more than 130,000 books for children.
Numainville, who has a master's degree in communications from the University of Minnesota, is involved with four nonprofit organizations.