Our Team

JOHN P. WENDEL, PhD.

John Wendel is Founder and President of Wendel Ethnographic Research, Inc.  He is responsible for leading the research team and ensuring that projects are designed to maximize both an ethnographic perspective and potential marketing insights.   

John began conducting ethnographic research for corporate clients in 1998 and was one of the earliest ethnographers working in the healthcare field. He was featured in Pharmaceutical Executive in 2003 about his use of ethnography in Pharma and has presented at various industry and academic conferences over the years:

• Philadelphia American Marketing Association – June 2011, Philadelphia, PA.
  “Ethnography: Understand and Shape Your Brand Experience”
• American Anthropological Association – December 2009, Philadelphia, PA. 
  “Viewing Healthcare Disparities Through Pharmaceutical Market Rlesearch”
• Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference - September 2006, Portland, OR
• Center for Business Intelligence’s 2nd Annual Pharma Leadership Summit on
  Decision Support and Analysis – November 2005, Princeton, NJ
• Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Group Conference –
  co-presented with Jennifer Bonilla, Genentech, Spring 2004, Orlando, FL

John began his career in ethnographic research in 1990, with three years of research funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts in the Pacific Islands of Micronesia.  His research investigated the formation of consumer identities among a diverse population being pulled into the global flow of people, products and ideas.  

He has taught anthropology and ethnographic methods at Fordham University and Neumann College and was also appointed Assistant Dean at Fordham University. John received his BA in anthropology from Fordham University and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Rochester.

CHARLEY SCULL, PhD:

Charley is a cultural anthropologist and filmmaker, a combination of skills that has served him well in the world of applied anthropology. He has worked in that field as an ethnographer and videographer on a wide-range of market research, branding & communications, and design projects in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors, since 2005. These projects have spanned topics as diverse as medical device design in prenatal ICUs, the culture of the workplace in a mid-sized multi-ethnic bakery, a global online “webnography” for a major pharmaceutical client, and ethnographic research of the global supply chain for a project on sustainable fishing.

Charley has frequently used video in his research, bringing his researcher sensibilities with him into the editing room. His work as a filmmaker includes a feature-length biography, educational training videos, and docu-promotional works for nonprofit organizations.

Charley has a Ph.D. in Anthropology and a Master’s of Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California, where his work focused on immigration, identity, gender and youth culture. His doctoral dissertation was titled: Identity Configurations: Re-Inventing Samoan Youth Identities in Urban California.