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Trish Adams
President
Opinionated
Trish Adams
President
Opinionated
Trish has a strong track record leading teams in the development of insight-driven strategies, big brand ideas and award-winning creative campaigns that have helped shape and grow some of the world’s most respected brands, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nike, P&G, Seventh Generation, Sony, Starbucks, Target and Verizon.
As President of Opinionated, based in Portland, Oregon, Trish is focused on overseeing all agency operations and new business. She is part of a team building a creatively-driven start-up that is nimble, understands the increasingly complex environment facing CMOs, and values the power of creativity in solving clients’ business problems. This effort has earned Opinionated Ad Age’s Small Agency of the Year honors for three consecutive years, marked by its creative output and revenue growth.
Prior to Opinionated, Trish spent two decades running Wieden+Kennedy Portland's largest and most complex accounts, and served as Managing Director of W+K Tokyo, growing the office's client base and revenue.
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Justine Armour
Chief Creative Officer
Grey New York
Justine Armour
Chief Creative Officer
Grey New York
Justine joined Grey in February 2020 as Chief Creative Officer of the New York office. One of advertising’s most-lauded female creatives, Justine has worked on iconic brands such as P&G, Volvo, Old Spice, Cheerios, Secret, Chrysler, Smirnoff and Spotify, and has been recognized at every major award show for wide-ranging work. She has served as a juror at Cannes, One Show, Clio, Andys, Ciclope, and others. She was named on Adweek’s Creative 100 list of 2019 and was recognized as a Female Frontier honoree by Campaign magazine in 2020.
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Matt Creamer
Creative Director
Redwood BBDO
Matt Creamer
Creative Director
Redwood BBDO
Matt Creamer is a creative director at Redwood BBDO, where he is working to develop breakthrough creative for Google. Until recently, he was co-head of creative at Forsman & Bodenfors NY, helping to launch the Swedish agency's first US office. True to his roots in journalism, he goes where the story takes him and has worked on everything from Super Bowl campaigns, to documentary series, to branded podcasts, to books. The list of brands he's worked on includes Apple, BMW, Polestar, iRobot, Adcouncil and American Express. Before going agency-side, he was an editor and reporter at Ad Age.
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Jean Freeman
Founder and CEO
Zambezi
Jean Freeman
Founder and CEO
Zambezi
Jean Freeman is Founder and CEO of Zambezi, the largest, female-owned advertising agency in the country. During her time at the agency, Jean has successfully grown Zambezi from a startup to a thriving business with a focus on creating tailored solutions that propel brands forward, and nurturing an agency culture of supportive collaboration. Zambezi has been recognized as one of the “Largest Women-Owned Businesses” and “100 Fast Growing Companies in LA” by the Los Angeles Business Journal and was a DIG Award recipient for the agency’s outstanding diversity, equality and inclusion efforts. Additionally, Jean has been included in Adweek’s “Disruptor List”, Campaign US’s 40 over 40 honors, named one of the 4A’s “100 People Who Make Advertising Great”, as well as a “Working Mother of the Year” by She Runs It. In addition to her work with Zambezi, Jean plays a central role in leading her family’s privately held $100MM personal planner business, Blue Sky.
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Walter T. Geer III
Chief Experience Design Officer
VMLY&R Health
Walter T. Geer III
Chief Experience Design Officer
VMLY&R Health
As Chief Experience Design Officer at VMLY&R HEALTH, Walter Geer is responsible for creating innovative design solutions to health. His role is to bridge technology, storytelling, design and user experience together to create meaningful health experiences.
With an 80 percent focus on health and pharma he also maintains a broader range of clients like Dell Technologies, Coke and Walgreens.
Walter was honored in Adweek’s ‘50 Most Important People in Marketing, Media and Tech’ and Savoy Magazine recognized Walter in their ‘Most Influential Black Executives in Corporate America’. He is not only known for re-inventing and revitalizing the way brands and advertisers connect with consumers, but also for being a passionate and vocal advocate. As the co-founder of Diverse Creatives, he has been outspoken in the charge for creating a diverse and inclusive culture for Black and brown creatives in advertising.
A veteran of the digital advertising space, Walter holds a total of six U.S. patents for digital ad formats and has implemented creative products and strategies for a variety of publishers and leading technology and media companies including Google, Viacom, NYTimes and MySpace. One of his most famous inventions was Skippable Pre-Roll (5,4,3,2,1 Skip video ad format). Walter has been an architect of market-first usability labs, applying biometric research to the development of creative executions while minimizing risk by understanding how consumer emotions and demographics impact brand engagement.
Prior to VMLY&R, Walter was SVP, Group Creative Director at TBWA\Worldhealth, where he ran Digital, Innovation and creative production.
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Dan Lucey
Chief Creative Officer
Havas New York
Dan Lucey
Chief Creative Officer
Havas New York
Dan is currently the Chief Creative Officer of the Havas flagship office in NY and Annex88, overseeing all work on a multitude of brands such as Bank of New York Mellon, Rite Aid, adidas, Beam Suntory, Reckitt, TDA, JLL, Wells Fargo, XBS, JBG Smith and Keurig Dr Pepper.
Prior to Havas and Annex88 he was the Executive Creative Director and equity partner at JOAN, where he managed the creative output for Georgia Pacific, Virgin Hotels, General Mills' Fiber One, Facebook, Walmart, Graduate Hotels, SafeAuto, Hive, Burst and Potential Energy.
Dan believes that it is essential that brands form a meaningful connection with their audience through impactful work that plays off modern cultural tensions and truths. He formed this point of view from over 20 years of experience at some of the world’s most prestigious agencies. His work has earned multiple gold awards at Cannes, The One Show, D&AD, The ANDY’s, Clios, Art Directors Club, and the Effies. He is also proud that his most recent campaign for General MIlls recorded the greatest turnaround in the brand’s history.
His recent efforts lead JOAN to a 2020 Small Agency of the Year accolade from AdAge thanks to the agency’s “head turning creative.” JOAN also won a gold Glass Lion for their IP Womanikin, a device that turns traditional male CPR dummies into female CPR dummies. This attachment addressed the problem in which woman are less likely to receive lifesaving CPR aid because society is uncomfortable touching a woman’s chest. By training people on both male and female dummies we can ensure women will get equal help.
He was recently included in Business Insider’s Most Creative People in Advertising Right Now, AdAge’s 40 under 40, and ADWEEK’s Creative 100. His Tide To Go Super Bowl commercial has been named one of the 10 best, on multiple polls.
Before JOAN, Dan joined BBDO New York, and teamed up with Chris Beresford-Hill, as an Executive Creative Director, leading a group that managed all Foot Locker brands, Guinness, Bud Light and priceline.com, helping the flagship office earn multiple AdAge A-List and Creativity A-List appearances, year after year.
Prior to BBDO, Dan led the Comcast and Google accounts at Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Before that he was at Saatchi & Saatchi New York, where he created some of the agency’s most high-profile, award-winning work, for Tide (Talking Stain), Crest (You Can Say Anything With a Smile), and Fruit by the Foot (Replacements). Dan started his career at Mad Dogs & Englishmen, in NY.
When he is not working, he can be found at home spending time with his wife and two children.
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Kevin Mulroy
Partner and Executive Creative Director
Mischief
Kevin Mulroy
Partner and Executive Creative Director
Mischief
Kevin Mulroy is an award-winning Executive Creative Director and founding partner of Mischief USA. He was named top five creative people of the year by Campaign Magazine, nominated for creative director of the year in Ad Age’s 2021 Creativity Awards, was recently named among Adweek’s Creative 100, and was named Campaign Magazine’s creative team of the year and Ad Age’s Creative Director of the year along with his partner Bianca Guimaraes in 2022. Mischief was named Ad Agency of the Year by both Campaign Magazine and Ad Age in 2022, not even two years after opening shop. Throughout his illustrious career, Kevin has won over 100 international awards, and has written and created advertising campaigns, websites, video games, screenplays, teleplays, ESPY award speeches, greeting cards, blog posts, birthday invites, and Internet comments with a thrilling fusion of insult and education, for which he earned the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor during a lucid dream while napping at work. Kevin lives in Montclair, NJ with his lovely wife and three children.
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Rupal Parekh
Partner
Work & Co
Rupal Parekh
Partner
Work & Co
Rupal Parekh is a marketing thought leader and Partner at Work & Co, a global design and technology company. For the past six years, she's worked with Fortune 500 companies and early stage companies on brand building and helping them to introduce new digital products and experiences to the world. She is also a board member for Giving Gap, an organization dedicated to equity in the philanthropy world. Prior to Work & Co, she led her own consultancy and was a strategic advisor for numerous agencies — including several rising small and midsize independent firms— and brands. Rupal has a depth of knowledge around the secrets to building successful companies from her time covering businesses as a journalist, including a seven-year stint as a writer and editor at Advertising Age. She has an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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Nita Song
President and Chief Momentum Officer
IW Group
Nita Song
President and Chief Momentum Officer
IW Group
Nita Song is the President and Chief Momentum Officer of IW Group. Nita has over 25 years of experience in multicultural marketing, communications, and agency management. In her 20+ years at IW Group, Nita has led client management, agency operations and business growth, successfully expanding IW Group’s services from PR to advertising, to integrated and experiential marketing. Under her leadership, IW Group has grown to become one of the most successful multicultural agencies in the industry. With a mission to create extraordinary brand experiences through culture and innovation, their clients include such major brands as McDonald's, Lexus, Warner Brothers, Netflix and Disney. The firm's culture-first, digital-led and youth-driven approach has enabled the agency to expand into new industry categories and audience segments in recent years including LGBTQ+ and Hispanic. Bold creative solutions with purpose have earned IW Group significant industry recognition including recently being named Ad Age’s 2022 Multicultural Agency of the Year. Nita dedicates time to serve on community and industry organizations including the Comcast Corporate DE&I Advisory Council, Google’s Multicultural Advisory Council, the Board of Directors of 3AF, and Board of Directors of Advancing Justice – LA. Nita is a graduate of the University of Southern California.
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Alvar Suñol
Co-President and Chief Creative Officer
Alma
Alvar Suñol
Co-President and Chief Creative Officer
Alma
As the Co-President and CCO of modern culture agency, alma, Alvar Suñol is a Catalán driven by curiosity and adrenaline in equal measure. His appetite has led him to dominate agencies in Europe, South America and now the United States, earning major awards for clients everywhere he's been. Currently, Alvar is alma’s creative guru, working with clients including Molson Coors, McDonald's PepsiCo, State Farm, Change the Ref and Google. On the Directory Big Won ranking, his team developed the most awarded radio and print campaigns of 2016 and were in the top 10 most creatively awarded agencies in the United States that same year. Alvar has also led alma to land numerous creative and effectiveness awards, including Cannes Lions, Clios and Effie Awards. Alvar was named “Creative of the Year” at El Ojo de Iberoamérica in 2016 and 2017. Before joining alma, he served as General Creative Director at Bassat Ogilvy Madrid and was a member of the Executive Committee at Group Ogilvy España. He also served as Vice President and Executive Creative Director of JWT Mexico.
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Aaron Walton
Co-Founder
Walton Isaacson
Aaron Walton
Co-Founder
Walton Isaacson
Recognized as a trailblazer and thought leader, Aaron Walton’s focus on innovation and cultural engagement has transformed traditional marketing and advertising strategies. As the CEO / co-founder of Walton Isaacson (WI), a full-service advertising agency, with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and New York, Aaron’s focus is squarely on identifying unseen opportunities rooted in cultural insights and connections, transforming the definition of the agency model by prioritizing diversity of thinking and encouraging strategic solutions that defy tradition. Founded in partnership with famed NBA superstar and entrepreneurial legend, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the agency has built inventive and dynamic business relationships with brands and organizations such as Lexus, McDonald's, Bristol Myers Squibb, JP Morgan Chase, and Spalding. Walton began his career as a marketing executive with PepsiCo before starting his own company, Aaron Walton Entertainment (AWE), which he sold in 2002 to Omnicom Group’s DAS division. In late 2020, after three years on ThinkLA’s Board of Directors, Walton was elected Co-president of the prestigious nonprofit advertising trade association, he is a member of the Ad Age Diversity Council, the AIMM Catalyst Committee and the San Francisco Symphony Advisory Council. He serves on the boards of Tectonic Theater Project, Young Audiences New York, and the Alonzo King Ballet. A recipient of Babson College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award, Aaron also was recognized by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's) as one of the 100 People Who Make Advertising Great and is member of the Ebony Magazine Power 100 list.
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Chris Witherspoon
CEO
DNA
Chris Witherspoon
CEO
DNA
As Chief Executive Officer of DNA, Chris is responsible for the operations and financial health of the agency and the growth and vitality of the company and clients. Before DNA, Chris was Executive Vice President, Managing Director at Publics West and held other senior account management positions in San Francisco with top advertising agencies Goodby Silverstein & Partners and TBWA\Chiat\Day; in Minneapolis at Fallon; and in Seattle at DDB. Chris has guided brand strategy and award-winning integrated marketing campaigns in various business categories both nationally and globally for other iconic brands such as E-Trade Financial, Citi, General Electric, Levi's, Miller Brewing Company, Starbucks, and T-Mobile. Outside of DNA, Chris is active in the advertising industry and local community. He serves as a founding board member of 600 & Rising, is board president for the BLAC Internship Program, and in 2022 was appointed to the Board of Trustees for Western Washington University by the state's governor. Chris's industry recognition also includes being named to the 2021 Campaign US 40 over 40 and the inaugural class of the ThinkNW All-Stars.
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