These are 30 rising stars of Madison Avenue who revolutionized advertising in 2023
The advertising industry is changing dramatically. Even as some employees fear being replaced, generative AI has emerged as a tool with the potential to take advertising work to new heights. At the same time, Google’s deadline for ending third-party cookies in Chrome is approaching, and advertisers must plan for the change. There is also a high demand for advertising talent who understands newer channels like retail media and TikTok.
These seismic shifts provide an excellent opportunity for early- and mid-career marketing professionals to take charge and guide their organizations. The individuals on this list are challenging the status quo by discovering new ways to access and harness data to improve advertising, creating eye-catching campaigns, and discovering new ways for brands to connect with customers.
Business Insider has recognized rising changemakers in advertising agencies for the sixth year.
We looked at people from a variety of backgrounds and roles, including media, creative, strategy, and production.
Nominations from agencies and peers, award-winning campaigns, the impact these individuals have had on their companies, and their potential to be industry leaders all contribute to the list.
Scroll down for an alphabetical list of the top 30 Madison Avenue rising stars.
Megan Bah, group director, client solutions and planning, Dentsu X US
Bah’s ten years of experience has given her the tenacity and adaptability to solve difficult problems for clients quickly. She oversees four major accounts at the branding and marketing firm Dentsu X and has assisted in the rapid launch of large campaigns.
For example, when a social media site
Bah rushed to execute a campaign for Vital Farms called “Roam Free, Little Bird” to highlight how its eggs come from pasture-raised hens after Twitter, formerly known as Twitter, did away with its iconic bird logo. However, this was an out-of-home campaign that could take weeks to launch. Nonetheless, Bah was able to place a series of billboards throughout San Francisco with the message “Roam Free, Little Bird.” “Live Like Our Hens.” The campaign was a finalist for The Drum Awards.
Bah also created “Get It,” an Illinois Lottery campaign with an original soundtrack by hip-hop artist Drew the Kiid. The campaign promoted the Illinois Lottery’s new branding as well as a new way to play the lottery.
Enter the lottery using the app. The campaign increased app installs by 35% and was nominated for an award at the 2023 Festival of Media North America Awards.
Bah does all of this while also training other agency employees and assisting in the development of her department’s future.
Bianca Chaer, strategist, Supernatural
Chaer worked in journalism and communications before joining the creative agency Supernatural. She is in charge of using the agency’s AI technology to develop audience and competitor insights for its clients, which includes pulling data from disparate sources using machine learning models and custom algorithms.
Chaer has also played an important role in
Merlyn, the agency’s in-house technology platform, is being expanded to include a generative-AI creative solution that will generate compelling prompts for campaign copy. She also modified Merlyn’s audience model capability so that a full audience model can be built in two days — a process that previously took weeks.
That could take up to two weeks in the past. She has also assisted in the implementation of three different audience testing methodologies to assist the agency in making its advertisements more effective.
By bringing forward Chaer’s audience models, Supernatural was able to land Carbone as a major new client.
In the final round of pitching, your insights edged out the competition. According to Supernatural, the proposed campaign has just gone live and is outperforming benchmarks.
As the account’s lead strategist, Chaer also assisted in the evolution of the award-winning “Deniers” campaign into new iterations for 2023. She also works for Supernatural’s consulting arm and is the lead strategist on The Christ Hospital.
Other healthcare clients and the healthcare network.
Jake Christensen, copywriter, Battery
Christensen has only been at Battery for about a year, but he already works with some of the company’s most important clients, such as the Royal Bank of Canada and Land O’Lakes.
Soon after joining the agency, he made an impression by spearheading RBC’s 2023 “Back to School” campaign, which featured spots aimed at Canadian students about how RBC Vantage — a collection of benefits available to people with RBC bank accounts — can help them save.
He’s also done a lot of work for Land O’Lakes, such as a recent TikTok campaign.
celebrating National Co-Op Month — Land O’Lakes is a farmer-owned cooperative — and a 10-day summer giveaway campaign that garnered 14 million views.
Christensen has also seized opportunities to use artificial intelligence to optimize work at Battery. For example, he began using
AI-generated voices for radio scripts and voiceovers, as well as more realistic image mockups.
And he’s become an important player in new business pitches. He worked with the new business team on two pitches last year, and he’s currently working on a few more that will be completed soon.
at the end of this year.
Carissa Conteh, client partner, Saatchi & Saatchi
Conteh is in charge of the agency’s work for Reliant Energy and Toyota, where she has worked on major launches for vehicles such as the Prius, Sienna, and Corolla Cross, as well as the company’s Olympics campaign. Conteh also volunteers for Dallas Pets Alive, an organization dedicated to preventing euthanasia of animals in shelters.
She is also a go-to person for the agency.
Initiatives in DE&I. Conteh is a member of the Saatchi Diversity Task Force, which was formed in 2020 to facilitate change within the agency and the advertising industry as a whole. She leads difficult conversations with the leadership team about actually implementing changes to make their workplace more inclusive.
She oversaw the Saatchi Scholarship Program, which awards a $10,000 scholarship, this year.
Scholarships and mentoring are available to BIPOC advertising students. She worked with Saatchi’s brass to ensure the scholarship was funded, and she assisted in the program’s execution, including pushing for submissions, selecting scholarship recipients, and ensuring they received the funds. She
Also, mentors were secured for the program, which saw a 5% increase in submissions.
Paulo Damasceno and Lucas Silva, creatives, Mother New York
Damasceno and Silva joined Mother this summer and made an immediate impact, serving on the pitch team that won a key new client and inspiring and mentoring junior creatives.
Silva was an associate creative at DAVID Miami and DAVID Sao Paulo prior to joining Mother; Damasceno worked at GUT for local and global brands across the agency’s So Paulo, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, and Miami offices.
Damasceno and Silva have taken over
numerous awards throughout their careers. Silva has received Cannes Lions and One Show honors for his work on Burger King’s “The Impossible Combo” campaign, as well as another Lion and a D&AD award for the launch of the Corona Sunbrew nonalcoholic beer. Damasceno won a Mobile Grand Prix at Cannes Lions and a D&AD Black Pencil for his work on Google Pixel 6’s “Real Tone” Super Bowl commercial.
Damasceno and Silva have both worked as teachers and speakers at Miami Ad School outside of their day jobs.
Aurélie Diaz, associate creative director; Lauren Torres, senior copywriter, GUT Los Angeles
Diaz and Torres, the creative duo behind GUT, have worked with a diverse range of high-profile clients throughout their careers, including DoorDash, Michelob ULTRA, and Activision-Blizzard’s Diablo.
Diaz was recently promoted to associate creative director, where she is in charge of managing and developing creative ideas. Torres was also recently promoted to senior copywriter, where she is in charge of conceptualizing many of the agency’s campaigns.
The pair were instrumental in launching DoorDash’s “Self-Love Bouquet” campaign.
The realization that more than half of the delivery service’s users are single prompted this initiative. The campaign encouraged people to order a bouquet of roses that included a The Rose vibrator, which was both encouraging and entertaining.
On Valentine’s Day, the concept of “self-love” is being de-stigmatized. The bouquet sold out in four days and generated over 749 million media impressions for the brand. The campaign won Grand Prix awards at both the Cannes Lions and the WARC Awards.
They were also in charge of the creative process for
Corona’s “Unfilter Mexico” campaign debuted at the 2023 Academy Awards.
Awards. The film was directed by Mexican-born cinematographer Emmanual Lubezki.
The campaign emphasized Hollywood’s unfair portrayal of Mexico, as well as how movies and shows frequently use a “yellow filter” to denote heat, danger, and risk. Corona asked Hollywood directors to leave yellow out of their films and save it for beer. According to the agency, the ad received 320 million impressions and received 99% positive sentiment.
Alex Dobson, strategy director, The&Partnership
Dobson oversees strategy efforts for multiple brands, including M&Ms, Snickers, and Skittles, for The&Partnership’s global client Mars.
He was also in charge of creating the campaign strategy for Uncle Ben’s rebranding to Ben’s Original. The campaign included a series of ads based on real families that won Effie Awards.
According to The&Partnership, the awards resulted in a 229% increase in purchase intent for the brand.
Dobson’s successful efforts for Mars’ global brands include increasing Extra White Gum sales by 33% with a “dental diversity” campaign and M&M’s “Halloween it, like you mean it push,” which the brand chose as its lead Halloween TV content worldwide. This year, Mars expanded its global reach by partnering with The&Partnership to handle a larger portion of its creative content output.
Dobson has emerged as a key AI beyond Mars.
resource within the agency and created a new pro-bono initiative to assist local organizations in integrating AI into their marketing efforts via in-person workshops. He’s also a part of WPP’s Unite program, which serves as an LGBTQ+ inclusive marketing resource center.
Dakari Dunning, senior social engagement strategist, 22Squared
Dunning uses his passion for culture and marketing experience to create high-impact social media campaigns for brands such as South African Tourism and Amazon Prime Video.
He works in all aspects of social media, from social-specific copywriting to community management and paid advertising.
strategy.
His work on Baskin-Robbins helped to revitalize the brand and cement it in the minds of a Gen Z audience, resulting in the ice cream company winning six Muse Clio Awards in a year. Similarly, Dunning’s strategy to form partnerships with Joey Chestnut and drive the Hot Dog Eating Contest conversation on the Nathan’s Famous Franks account has generated millions of impressions and thousands of new followers for the brand.
Dunning has also created social media processes that are used throughout the agency, as well as a reporting framework to demonstrate the value of social media output. In addition to his two direct reports,
Dunning also assists other brand strategists in translating their concepts into effective social media executions.
Michelle Farhang, head of project management, Portal A
Farhang was recently promoted to oversee all of the agency’s projects and partnerships, which include brand strategy, content, video production, and collaborations with creators and celebrities.
She is especially interested in creating social video content for brands such as Target.
Google and Lenovo are two companies that cater to Gen Z and millennial audiences. She directed a YouTube project called “My Cart is Full” for Target, which promoted Black-owned brands sold at Target. According to Portal A, the campaign was viewed over 2 million times.
Farhang also spearheaded Android’s first creator campaign with creators.
Shalom Blac and Ryan Trahan. It has received over 5 million views on YouTube.
Farhang is the leader of Portal A’s diversity and inclusion group, Diversity Forward. She also contributes to the agency’s programming efforts by bringing in guest speakers, organizing art shows, and volunteering.
Farhang previously worked at agencies such as Goodby Silverstein on advertisements for Got Milk? She has also held design positions at Turner Duckworth and Vault49.
Rich Forzano, copywriter; Martha Shafer, art director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Forzano and Shafer’s junior creative team has only three years of ad industry experience, but they have already created major, award-winning campaigns for brands as diverse as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Samuel Adams, Liberty Mutual, and the humanitarian initiative Rubles for Ukraine.
Both began as interns at the agency, where they worked on six commercials for Liberty Mutual’s “LiMu Emu and Doug” campaign, as well as all creative assets used across other channels.
Then, they worked on the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Doritos brands to create unique creative aimed at a Gen Z audience that is wary of traditional advertising. Forzano and Shafer collaborated with Megan Thee Stallion to create
Created a song called “Flamin’ Hottie,” as well as a Snapchat AR experience called Snackable Screens. When users held a chip to their phone, the AR technology projected the music video “Flamin Hottie” onto it.
Recently, they developed a Super Bowl campaign to promote the new flavor of Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager.
Despite their inexperience, Forzano and Shafer’s work has already been recognized at Cannes, the ANDYs, the ADDYs, and the ADC Annual Awards.
Anastasia Gallardo, associate director of strategy and content, Hill Holliday
Gallardo is in charge of content and influencer marketing for brands such as Point32Health, Strategic Education Inc., and Santander.
Gallardo knows the best branded content placements to work with when brands want to create content that appears to be editorial.She’s made friends with people who work at publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and CNBC.
She manages content for a sponsored section of the Boston Globe called Aging Strong for health client Point23Health.
explores the challenges of aging.
She also worked on a sponsorship program for Point32Health with Boston Globe Media’s mental health podcast “Turning Points.”She’s been promoted twice in her three years at the agency. She manages the agency’s social channels in addition to working on content strategies for brands.Gallardo previously worked at Mechanic, Primary, and RCN marketing firms.
She has also worked as a freelance social media and content consultant for brands, developing social media strategies, content calendars, and website development projects.
Gallardo is a food and lifestyle influencer outside of work.
Lacey Gilbert, vice president strategy director, Leo Burnett
Gilbert joined Leo Burnett in 2020 and quickly rose through the ranks, directing award-winning campaigns such as Beam Suntory’s “Bourbon Time” and Coors Light’s “Clone Machine.”
Gilbert has led the strategy for Campbell’s Chunky Soup campaigns.
including “Lunchtime is Your Halftime” and the current “Champions of Chunky,” starring NFL players Travis and Jason Kelce. That work helped Chunky Soup double its sales growth, outperforming the soup category overall, and earned Leo Burnett a gold award at the ARF David Ogilvy Awards.
She has also been instrumental in advancing new technologies.
The agency’s revenue. Gilbert’s insights aided in the creation of the “Oh Hill Yeah” campaign, which has helped Hillshire Farm reach a younger demographic while increasing purchase intent and brand awareness.
Early testing for memorability.
Gilbert is dedicated to developing the next generation of diverse talent. She has inspired and educated others within the agency by co-authoring a comprehensive crash-course strategy guidebook, dubbed the Strategy Handbook.
Launchpad. Gilbert serves on the board of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of Advertising as a mentor. She is also actively involved in Leo Burnett’s Pencil Project, a collaborative effort.
in collaboration with Chicago State University to introduce students of color to mentorship and educational opportunities. Gilbert is also a 4As Multicultural Advertising Intern Program alumnus and mentor.
Olivia Hentz, VP, data science, Known
Hentz oversees the data, analytics, and technology teams for SkepticTM, the agency’s in-house media management platform. This means she is in charge of the critical, behind-the-scenes work that allows Known to leverage its clients’ budgets to position the best mix of ads across multiple channels.
She can also modify Known’s technology to meet the needs of clients. For example, when AMC Networks wanted to increase subscribers for an AMC+ show, she advised the movie theater chain to use its own inventory first to find subscribers before paying for ads on other companies’ websites. These cost savings had no negative impact on results: subscribers increased by 50% when compared to similar previous campaigns.
Hentz also collaborated with Memorial Sloan.
Kettering had difficulty measuring the effectiveness of its advertisements because healthcare privacy regulations restricted its use of tracking pixels. Hentz rebuilt the hospital’s measurement strategy using a variety of tools such as analytics and incrementality tests — which determine the contribution of each media channel to a campaign — to assist MSK in optimizing its ad strategy across channels.
Aside from her direct client work, Hentz created a new product for Known that helped the agency uncover over $100 million in inefficient media.
to re-deploy in order to achieve better results.
Jean Huang, associate director of data and analytics, Good Apple
Huang, who joined Good Apple shortly after graduating from college in 2016, has been a significant contributor to the company’s 5x growth, as her work in analytics and measurement helps prove the effectiveness of the campaigns it runs for clients. Her efforts and leadership have aided in the transformation of Good Apple’s media planning process, and her team now provides critical guidance to ensure that measurement is at the forefront of client campaigns.
Huang’s work addresses some of the most pressing issues and opportunities in the advertising industry. For example, over the last few years, she has led Good Apple’s work in
Using cookie-free solutions. This is an important time to do so because Google has stated that it will stop passing third-party cookies in its Chrome browser next year. Good Apple has grown its audience under Huang’s leadership.
building and measuring data clean rooms, which are solutions that allow one company to use another company’s data in a secure manner
In a secure manner. She has enabled Good Apple to directly link advertising to sales results as a result of her efforts.
Another area Huang has helped Good Apple push into is retail media, which is one of the fastest-growing areas within the $130 billion digital ad industry this year.
Lauren Kaindl, associate director of brand planning, EP+Co
Kaindl, who joined EP+Co in 2021, works with clients such as John Deere, General Mills’ Old El Paso seasoning brand, and furniture manufacturer Havertys to better connect with customers through data.
As the John Deere strategic lead,
She’s been a key player in helping the business grow and has discovered ways for the brand to make its presence known to prospective customers. For example, in 2023, Kaindl assisted the company in making a big impression at the ConExpo, a massive construction trade show, by combining out-of-home and paid media. Her strategy increased John Deere’s
presence at the expo, ensuring that attendees came to the company’s booth
and increased the amount of time they spent on average. She also improved John Deere Construction’s landing page, resulting in an 87.2% increase in time spent on the site.
Kaindl is also assisting in the extension of EP+Co’s first major campaign for Old El Paso.
seasoning known as “So. Many. Pasobilities.” The campaign, which will launch in summer 2023, is intended to position the seasoning as a key component of family gatherings and has already generated strong purchase intent and an emotional connection with the brand, according to the agency.
Aaron Martin, director of strategy, Periscope
Martin assists brands in comprehending insights. He leads a team of five people who advise brands on how to create ads that address customer pain points.
Martin, for example, oversaw a three-year campaign to promote signups for Intuit QuickBooks’ online accountant program. According to Periscope, the campaign aimed to connect with accountants and increased signups by 13%.
Martin has also worked on pro bono campaigns for the agency, including a rebrand for the nonprofit Uniting Voices Chicago, or UVC, in 2021. UVC’s fundraising efforts at its largest event, Red Jacket Optional, increased by 19% year over year as a result of the rebrand. He also assisted with a campaign for
TurnSignl, an app that allows drivers who encounter law enforcement to connect with an attorney.
Martin’s work has helped Periscope gain new clients such as Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, CLR cleaning products, and Meet Minneapolis, a tourism organization.
Martin is also a member of the 4A’s Multicultural Advertising industry group.
Internship program that assists diverse advertising students in obtaining advertising jobs. Martin’s goal is to provide support and tools that he did not have early in his career to encourage more people to pursue a career in strategy.
Martin comes to Periscope with experience from previous roles at VMLY&R Commerce, McCann Health, and Pro Media.
Nicole McKinney, senior brand and cultural strategist, Quantasy + Associates
McKinney has spent three years at Quantasy working on marketing strategy, digital campaign management, and content creation for major clients such as Wells Fargo, HBO, and Target, all while ensuring cultural relevance and authenticity.
For HBO, for example, McKinney and her team discovered that 55% of 500 Black respondents value brands that recognize Juneteenth. McKinney went on to develop an extensive strategy for HBO.
emphasizing that its brands should proactively share knowledge to relieve Black individuals from the burden of being sole educations during the federal holiday.
McKinney was also instrumental in
Target assisted in highlighting Black creators in a video as part of its “Black Beyond Measure” platform. The work was displayed as a four-story digital billboard in Target’s New York Times Square store, raising campaign awareness among Black customers.
In addition to this work, McKinney has been assisting Quantasy’s efforts to partner with.
ThinkNow on the Black Consumer Project, a multi-wave study aimed at highlighting Black Americans’ economic and cultural contributions. She is also committed to assisting the next generation of
professionals, including her work with the LA Promise Fund, which helps students prepare for college and careers.
Sam Mouser, senior audio producer, New York Times Advertising
McKinney has spent three years at Quantasy working on marketing strategy, digital campaign management, and content creation for major clients such as Wells Fargo, HBO, and Target, all while ensuring cultural relevance and authenticity.
For HBO, for example, McKinney and her team discovered that 55% of 500 Black respondents value brands that recognize Juneteenth. McKinney went on to develop an extensive strategy for HBO.
emphasizing that its brands should proactively share knowledge to relieve Black individuals from the burden of being sole educations during the federal holiday.
McKinney was also instrumental in
Target assisted in highlighting Black creators in a video as part of its “Black Beyond Measure” platform. The work was displayed as a four-story digital billboard in Target’s New York Times Square store, raising campaign awareness among Black customers.
In addition to this work, McKinney has been assisting Quantasy’s efforts to partner with.
ThinkNow on the Black Consumer Project, a multi-wave study aimed at highlighting Black Americans’ economic and cultural contributions. She is also committed to assisting the next generation of
professionals, including her work with the LA Promise Fund, which helps students prepare for college and careers.
Jessica Peltzman, associate director of social media, GSD&M
GSD&M
Peltzman has been promoted three times since joining GSD&M in 2017 and has worked with clients such as Capital One, Stanley, and Pizza Hut to create social-first work driven by strategic insights.
Take, for example, Pizza Hut’s “Melts Not for Sharing,” which turned the concept of social sharing on its head by instructing customers not to share their experience on social media. They were instead encouraged to go to a microsite and sign a “MDA,” or Melts Disclosure Agreement, pledging not to share their melts online in exchange for a chance to win a prize.
Peltzman and her team enlisted the help of influencers such as rapper Yung Gravy to generate additional buzz for the campaign, which received more than 2 billion media impressions and accolades from award shows such as The Shortys and The One Show. Importantly, the campaign contributed to a 5% increase in sales for Pizza Hut during the quarter.
Outside of the agency, Peltzman pursues her social media passions as a food blogger and fashion creator, sharing her OOTDs and latest shopping hauls.
Outside of agency life, Peltzman continues her passion for social media as a food blogger and fashion creator, sharing her OOTDs and latest shopping hauls.
Christine Presto, senior producer, Majority
Majority
Presto is the Atlanta-based agency’s lead producer, working on diversity-focused ads for brands such as Sprite, General Motors, and Realtor.com. Motion capture, experiential, photography, and digital projects are among her production skills.
Presto assisted in the creation of a series of ads starring NBA players Trae Young and Anthony Edwards to explain to consumers that the taste of the drink had not changed when Sprite changed the color of its bottles from green to clear. She also created a hip-hop campaign for Sprite’s 50th anniversary, featuring Nas, Hakim, Latto, and GloRilla.
Presto’s work for General Motors focused on the Southwestern Athletic Conference and historically Black colleges and universities.
In 2023, she also assisted in the development of the first brand campaign for J-Harden Wines, the wine brand backed by NBA player James Harden. Her other recent campaigns include those for Coca-Cola-owned Fanta and the Latin dating app Chispa.
Prior to joining Majority in 2021, Presto worked in production at Left Field Labs, Vigor, and Iris. She started with Majority on a four-week contract and was later hired full-time.
Sujoy Roy, managing director of client advice and management, Initiative
Roy oversees Initiative’s work with Applebee’s on a team of 15 communication designers, strategists, and media buyers who are attempting to grow the restaurant chain’s brand and sales. In 2022, Roy helped spearhead the viral “Fancy Like Applebee’s” campaign on TikTok with country artist Walker Hayes. According to the agency, the campaign received 1 billion impressions.
Roy collaborated with World Wrestling Entertainment to incorporate Applebee’s into the Royal Rumble for another campaign. The campaign was inspired by the discovery that more than half of Applebee’s customers are WWE fans.
Roy meets with some of Applebee’s 1,700 franchise owners on a regular basis to stay informed about the restaurants. He also organizes annual agency summits aimed at innovating new ideas for the agency’s media strategists.
Roy is a boomerang Initiative employee, having first joined the agency in 2017 and returning in 2022 after working at sister agency UM. He has also held sales positions with ESPN and CNN.
Sollin Sæle, senior creative, Accenture Song
Saele specializes in figuring out novel ways to apply new technology.
This year, she collaborated on the Ladies Professional Golf Association’s “In Her Head” virtual reality experience, which aimed to raise awareness of the gender disparity in golf. Spectators at the LPGA spring tournament could don a virtual reality headset and play a game of virtual golf to demonstrate the mental and physical pressures that female athletes face, such as financial anxiety. She also created a campaign in Norway to raise awareness about food waste.
This year, her work was honored at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, The One Show, and TribecaX. This year, she received a Cannes Lions “See It Be It” award, which aims to achieve equal gender representation in the creative industry.
Sle debuted in the advertising industry in 2020, when she won two bronze Cannes Lions for a project called “Might Be Coming Soon” that promoted local stores and businesses in Oslo, Norway.
Sle joined Accenture Song this year after previously working for Publicis Norway and Anorak/NoA. She gives a tour talk at Miami Art School to assist female advertising students in breaking into the industry.
Christine Swartwout, director of analytics, CrossMedia
Swartwout assists companies such as Invesco, Planet Fitness, and the American Cancer Society in measuring the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.
Her job is to sort through all of a campaign’s statistics and package them so that brands understand how their ad campaigns perform.
This frequently entails developing customized analytics programs for individual clients. She developed a method for demonstrating how advertising could be used most effectively to raise donations for the American Cancer Society, earning CrossMedia the account.
Swartwout also discovered a way to measure both national and local ad dollars in order to reallocate an ad budget across linear TV, digital video, streaming TV, search, social, and display advertising for Planet Fitness, lowering the brand’s “cost-per-join” metric by 75% between January and August 2023.
Swartwout worked as an analyst at Mindshare before joining CrossMedia in 2018.
Rishi Udeshi, associate director, programmatic, mSix&Partners
Udeshi is in charge of leading programmatic media buying for mSix’s largest client, gaming behemoth EA’s $40 million in digital media spend for popular games such as “Apex Legends,” “The Sims,” and “Madden NFL.”
Udeshi and his team designed a 33-country full funnel launch across channels such as Google TV, YouTube CTV, and other programmatic channels for the recent launch of EA Sports FC, the rebrand from the former FIFA soccer franchise. The strategy helped to make the launch a huge success, with over 1.6 billion games played in the first few weeks.
As the ad industry prepares for the demise of third-party cookies and the depreciation of other tracking signals, Udeshi has also built EA solutions using first-party data, custom algorithms, and data clean rooms.
Udeshi mentors eight direct reports and provides guidance throughout the organization, with a unique ability to translate complex and thorny topics into something more digestible.
Katie White, VP, account and sustainability director, The Martin Agency
White had been a vice president and account director for more than a year, working on accounts for Google, Hanes, and DoorDash. She also became sustainability director in September, where she examined the agency’s work through the eyes of an environmentalist.
Sustainability has long been a personal passion for White, but she has turned it into a business driver for the Martin Agency, to the point where she reports directly to the chief revenue officer. As sustainability director, White is responsible for developing and implementing the agency’s sustainability strategy as well as overseeing ESG compliance. She also uses sustainability to drive new business, most recently signing on with a nature-based tech company that plans to launch a larger awareness campaign in 2024.
White created these sustainability initiatives from the ground up. She considered the agency’s internal initiatives for reducing waste and carbon footprint, and devised ways to communicate these to clients and other agencies.
For example, she was instrumental in developing the Martin Agency’s “Sustainability Tension Map,” which measures the gap between people’s intentions to support sustainability and their actions — a tool that can be used to guide other brands.
Allison Wolf, manager at Invention+, Mindshare
Wolf’s work in Invention+, the agency’s unit dedicated to innovating traditional media plans, has been instrumental in helping Mindshare and its clients support a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Wolf has spent the last year expanding on work she began in 2021, when she was instrumental in the launch of Mindshare’s Hispanic and Latino private marketplace, or PMP. A PMP allows publishers to auction off their premium inventory to a select group of advertisers. Clients such as Espoln Tequila and Tyson Foods used the Hispanic and Latino PMP to direct media dollars specifically toward Hispanic and Latino journalism and content creators.
“Allison was a great partner for us – dedicated, knowledgeable, and passionate about DEI,” said Blake Belanger, group vp of Latine PMP partner My Code Media.
Wolf led the launch of a Women’s PMP this year to drive ad revenue to women-owned and women-centered publishers, particularly in the news, healthcare, and civil rights sectors.
Wolf also launched Mindshare’s Intentional Media Library, a collection of diverse media partners from minority communities such as LGBTQ, Black, disabled, indigenous, and others.
Wolf has also collaborated with Mindshare’s internal DEI employee resource groups to organize events that raised thousands of dollars for non-profit organizations like Black Girls Code, HBCU First, and the National Alliance on Mental Health Illness.
Kevin Zengel, associate creative director, Havas
He has designed advertisements for Under Armour, World Wrestling Entertainment, and the University of Arizona. Zengel is particularly interested in discovering the next big technology and creative tools. For example, he holds a machine learning certification from Columbia University. He also has expertise in analytics, influencer marketing, and Adobe software.
Zengel also spearheaded “The First Metaverse Internship in the World,” an internal Havas program that hired creators to teach the agency about artificial intelligence and Web3.
According to Zengel’s peers, he develops campaigns with larger strategies and an understanding of the advertising industry than just the creative idea itself. He monitors the activities of clients’ competitors and keeps up with industry trends.
Zengel’s creative work has also earned him several industry awards, including W3 Awards, Clio Awards, and Addy Awards.
Zengel previously worked at 160over90 and Disney’s internal agency Disney Yellow Shoes before joining Havas. Zengel is also the cofounder and creative director of Ronin Creative Co., a freelance creative firm.
