Rob Stone

Chief Executive Officer Onclusive

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Rob Stone runs Onclusive, the media intelligence company that communications and PR teams use to monitor coverage, measure its effect and prove that what they do has value. That last part is the commercial heart of the business and the thing Stone talks about most: communications budgets get cut first in a downturn precisely because their contribution is hardest to quantify, so a platform that makes brand investment measurable and defensible is selling survival to its buyers as much as software. He came to the job in September 2022 from Escalent, a sister company in the Symphony Technology Group portfolio, relocating from the United States to London. His background is not in software but in insights and market research — he co-founded a consultancy, then ran two research businesses as chief executive — which is a different route into media intelligence than most of his competitors’ leaders took, and shows in how the company positions itself.

Career Highlights

• Appointed Chief Executive Officer of Onclusive effective 12 September 2022, succeeding Manuel Moerbach, relocating from the United States to London.
• Launched Onclusive’s unified communications platform in March 2026, combining media monitoring, measurement and workflow in a single interface built on the company’s Global Content Hub and AI analytics.
• Co-founded the technology-sector insights consultancy Doxus in 2000.
• Chief Executive Officer of Market Strategies International.
• Chief Executive Officer of Grail Insights, which he led through its 2021 acquisition by Escalent.
• Chief Strategy Officer and board director of Escalent from 2021 to 2022.
• Has consulted for Apple, Facebook, Google and Cisco on product strategy and customer experience.

Professional Journey

Stone took an undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and a doctorate at Columbia University — a research training that is unusual among software chief executives and rather less unusual in the insights industry where he made his career. In 2000 he co-founded Doxus, a consultancy focused on the technology sector, and through that work advised Apple, Facebook, Google and Cisco on product strategy and customer experience. That client list is a reasonable proxy for the kind of problem he spent his early career on: what people actually do with a product, as distinct from what they say about it.

He moved from consulting into running research businesses, serving as Chief Executive Officer of Market Strategies International and then of Grail Insights. Grail was acquired by Escalent in 2021, and Stone joined the combined company as Chief Strategy Officer and a board director. Escalent is a Symphony Technology Group portfolio company, and that relationship is what brought him to his current job: when Onclusive’s chief executive Manuel Moerbach stepped down in 2022 to move to New York for family reasons, STG appointed Stone, an executive it already knew, and installed its operating partner John Ouren as executive chairman of the board at the same time.

Onclusive itself was assembled rather than founded in the ordinary sense. STG acquired Kantar’s Reputation Intelligence business and rebranded it as Onclusive in early 2022, and Moerbach’s tenure had already added Critical Mention and Digimind to the group. Stone inherited a company that was a collection of acquired monitoring and measurement assets, and much of his tenure has been spent turning that into one product. The clearest expression of it came in March 2026 with the launch of a unified platform bringing media monitoring, journalist engagement and media performance analysis into a single interface, running on the company’s Global Content Hub with AI analytics layered over it. He framed that launch as the first step in a further phase of AI-based development, and tied it explicitly to what communications teams told the company they needed in 2026: measurable, defensible brand investment under continuing budget scrutiny.

Education

Columbia University

Ph.D.

University of Chicago

Undergraduate degree