Advertising Age reported on more Wunderman Thompson management shits shifts that accelerated the White women’s bandwagon in the process. It seems like only a short time ago that the White advertising agency was anti-female with its toxic sexual harassment and worst-in-class gender pay gaps. Oh, it was only a short time ago. Now White women are being given the opportunity to create multi-layered management hierarchies that are every bit as dinosaur-like and dysfunctional as the fucked-up organizational charts crafted by White men. Lester Wunderman and the Commodore would be proud. You go, girls!
Wunderman Thompson Makes Further Changes To North American Leadership
Swift CEO Liz Valentine becomes chief executive of the network’s west region
By Lindsay Rittenhouse
WPP’s Wunderman Thompson has made several key leadership changes in North America, including promoting Swift CEO and Co-Founder Liz Valentine to chief executive of the network's west region. Isobar Chief Growth Officer Melissa Dorko was poached as the chief growth officer of Wunderman Thompson North America and Carrie Philpott, the managing director of Interpublic Group’s Huge Atlanta, was hired as president of Wunderman Thompson Atlanta.
Wunderman Thompson West includes its California, Seattle and Denver offices, the network’s mobile business and Swift, WPP's social shop in Portland, Ore. Valentine maintains her position as CEO of Swift and her appointment follows that of Joe Crump being named CEO of Wunderman Thompson East, which is its New York headquarters, and Ian Sohn to CEO of Wunderman Thompson Central, which spans the agency’s (Publicis Groupe also recently restructured most of its creative agencies in the U.S. into east, west and central regions. Andrew Bruce became CEO of Publicis Communications West, Andrew Swinand was named CEO of Publicis Communications Center and Jem Ripley was hired as CEO of Publicis Communications East.)
“Melissa, Liz and Carrie are hands down some of the best and brightest minds in the industry,” Wunderman Thompson North America CEO Shane Atchison said in a statement. “Each of them will be a key part of Wunderman Thompson's success going forward—I can’t wait to see their impact on our business.”
Dorko will be responsible for new business outreach and development. Before Isobar, Dorko was vice president of North American business development for Sapient Razorfish (now part of Publicis Sapient).
In addition to continuing leading Swift as CEO, Valentine will be given oversight of the strategic vision, growth, operations and client relations of Wunderman Thompson’s California, Seattle and Denver offices.
At Huge Atlanta, Philpott is credited with driving business growth for clients such as Turner Sports, Lowe's Home Improvement, UPS, PGA of America and CNN.
The appointments continue to solidify the North American team of Wunderman Thompson, the new network formed through the merger of Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson late last year. Earlier this year, Wunderman Thompson North America named Michael Steiger as chief talent officer, Robyn Tombacher as chief operations officer, Brandon Geary as chief strategy officer, Adam Foulsham as chief financial officer and Jason Burby as chief client officer [of] Chicago, Austin, Minneapolis and Memphis hubs.
I've seen nothing but a sea of white women being promoted for the last, oh, year or so. But it seems like there has been an uptick of white women "creative leaders" getting promoted in the last month in particular.
ReplyDeleteIs 2050 the predicted year for POC to finally get some promotions? Are we just supposed to pretend a wall of white women = diversity until then?
But what is your boule black leadership doing? Besides the bootcamps and 10 week college internships? What is Adcolor doing? What are your bootcamp & diversity officers doing? Are your creative leaders (Geoff Edwards, Jayanta Jenkins and Jimmy Smith)are these men demanding change? Where are your inclusion and culture officers, Renatta McCanns, Douglas Melvilles, Tiffany Warrens ?
ReplyDeleteThey sold you out, just like the democrats. None of these "initiatives" have made any significant change in the advertising industry. In fact the number of black talent is less than it was in the early 2000s.