Litvinoff led a management buyout of the business in July 2011, backed by Lake Capital, after then-parent company InfoGroup decided to sell the research agency to focus on its core data services business.

According to Terry Graunke, Lake Capital’s chairman, Litvinoff and Lake had been discussing a succession plan for several months. “We felt this was the most appropriate time to make a change,” Graunke said.

ORC recently acquired the Cincinnati-based consumer research specialist Marketing Research Services Inc as part of a planned expansion of ORC’s consumer research offer.

Litvinoff has been president and CEO of ORC since 2010. He’d worked for ORC before that, running its Guideline and Find/SVP businesses, but spent some time as an independent consultant between 2008 and 2010.

Earlier in his career he was president of Knowledge Networks, but his time there didn’t overlap with Kooyman’s, who joined the digital research specialist in 2006 after nine years in senior positions at Ipsos North America.

Kooyman led the sale of Knowledge Networks to GfK in December 2011 and become chief operating officer for GfK Custom Research North America after the deal closed. More recently he had a brief stint as CEO of MetrixLab USA.