Individual Categories
CEO of the Year
Sharon Whale
OLIVER Agency
Sharon is CEO of Global Markets & Operations at OLIVER and The Inside Ideas Group (IIG). She is an integral part of the leadership team that has delivered incredible growth (35% this year). Sharon spearheads a ‘people first’ culture which this year has led to OLIVER UK being named #40 Best Large Companies to work for in the UK on The S...
Karen Stacey
Digital Cinema Media
Since 2015, Karen has led the charge in reassessing the cinema medium, raising its status among the industry as a premium, impactful, effective and creative opportunity, one that is a must-have, not nice-to-have. She has transformed a traditional medium seen to be in decline to a thriving one. She brings with her wisdom, business acume...
Laura Fenton
OMD UK
Laura joined OMD UK in 2004 as a fresh-faced graduate and rapidly ascended the ranks to become the agency’s first ever female CEO just 16 years later in December 2020. This impressive rise included a stint as OMD UK’s first part-time Managing Director, balancing agency leadership with proud parenting of two young children. Laura’s i...
Maureen Ryan-Fable
FIRST
Maureen Ryan Fable, Group CEO of global events agency FIRST, is one of the few female CEO’s in the experiential space. In her 17 years at the agency, Maureen has made massive strides for the brand, positioning us as an industry leader with offices in New York, London, Dublin, Los Angeles and Singapore and employees in over a dozen coun...
Paula MacKenzie
KFC UK&I
Paula is responsible for nearly 1,000 restaurants and 28,000 team members across the UK & Ireland. Under Paula’s stewardship, KFC has transformed. With brand health scores at all-time high and record sales, UK&I is the fastest growing KFC market across the globe and the largest outside of the US and China. This is no mean feat. It's Pa...
Rebecca Bezzina
R/GA London
Since her appointment in March 2020, Rebecca immediately began rebuilding the agency’s leadership team and reestablishing R/GA as the leading digital innovation agency in the UK. Within 18 months, her new team was assembled and she led R/GA to Campaign’s Global Agency of the Year 2020.And in 2021, Rebecca focused heavily in R&D and int...
Sarah de Carvalho MBE
It's a Penalty
Sarah de Carvalho MBE, Founder and CEO of It's a Penalty, is deserving of a place on Campaign's Influential Women list because of the incredible impact she has had on the global landscape of abuse, exploitation and trafficking. Since its founding in 2015, Sarah has built It's a Penalty into a global brand with a growing platform, and m...
Conquering Creativity
Katie Dean
21GRAMS London
Katie Dean is an award winning Associate Creative Director for 21Grams London. She is a rare breed in healthcare - a scientist who doesn’t just think empirically. She started her career in science, but the creative pull proved too strong. It still does. She’s got her radar on for opportunities and sees them where others don’t. From the...
Anne Lise Waal
Attensi
Anne Lise Waal, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of Attensi, is one of Europe’s leading women in tech. Joining Attensi in 2013, shortly after its inception, she leverages her computer engineering background to support the technical, operational and delivery aspects of the business. Under Waal’s leadershi...
Caroline Gregory
Unilever
AXE is back, and Caroline Gregory is the creative marketing powerhouse behind this transformation. Her leadership of “The NEW AXE Effect” global campaign brings AXE back to its iconic status, whilst aligning its values with the greater Unilever mission and driving business growth with cheeky, bold content that goes straight to the h...
Melody Sylvester
ENGINE
Melody Sylvester leads from the front. Her focus has always been on craft, nurturing talent, mentorship and making a difference that shows up in the work and indeed the workplace. Her time at Engine has been about amplifying the voices of her team, elevating production within the agency and actively positioning producers further upstre...
Nicola Wood
Ogilvy
Nicola Wood is an award winning Creative Director here at Ogilvy. This year, Nicola has produced some of the most boundary pushing creative work that our industry has seen, none more so than our work for Relate. ‘Let’s Talk the Joy of Later Life Sex’ was born out of the statistic that an incredible 80% of society flinch from the i...
Sachini Imbuldeniya
News UK
Sachini is Creative Director of News UK’s content agency, Bridge Studio. Her creative leadership contributed to Bridge Studio winning a host of industry awards including the Content Agency of the Year at the Campaign Publishing Awards in 2021. Sachini recognised that the industry she loves lacks diversity. For too long companies have...
Entrepreneur of the Year
Ashleigh Bishop
Bagboard
Ashleigh pursues her vision of a world where conscious consumerism is the norm with relentless energy. Through the power of persuasion and passion she convinced 35 sustainable brands to join the advertising platform, launching during the pandemic as an answer to peoples’ desire to shop more sustainably. 60% of the brands are female-led...
Carron Edmonds
The Maverick Group
Carron Edmonds is a rare breed of female entrepreneur – as comfortable steering one of the continent’s largest independent agencies, as she is getting ‘stuck in’ with her team. Growing The Maverick Group (TMG) from a ‘no client’ start-up to an independent upstart with 9 specialist Business Units, she pioneered in certain niches befo...
Maira Genovese
MG Empower
MG Empower was born from a greater purpose. Its story starts in a coffee shop in 2017 when Maira Genovese - Founder and President - brought this purpose to life. Maira is the face and the heart behind MG Empower. She moved to London in 2005, leaving behind a successful marketing career in Brazil to restart from scratch aiming to pursue...
Making Media Matter
Jemma Parkes
Mindshare Worldwide
Sports marketing is inherently male dominated. When I stepped into the role of Nike Strategy and Planning lead, my mission was clear: define the next chapter of brand media for Nike and ignite change. Having the right team around me was the first step. We increased headcount while boosting women in leadership positions from 20% to 7...
Amy Jenkins
Channel 4
Having spent 19 years working in advertising, I have become a passionate advocate for equality and inclusion. The pandemic brought into sharp focus the need for an inclusive society and I am determined to bring this ethos into both 4Sales and the wider industry. Since 2018, alongside my role as Agency Sales Lead at Channel 4, I have he...
Emma Withington
Manning Gottlieb OMD
This year, Managing Partner, Emma Withington has steered her clients and her agency through the most dramatic change in consumer behaviour, delivering MG OMD’s most successful year in history. Six pitch wins, multiple awards, a new 12 strong planning team, 52 weekly planning forums, three judging panels and a critical role in MG’s Med...
Ingrid Leddin
Zenith
Without Bodyform, periods would still be blue. Without Ingrid, red periods wouldn’t be on TV or in public media. The truth: we still battle misogyny in media. It’s not about lack of brand confidence starting uncomfortable conversations – TV and Social platforms often block brands from buying media to be able to say it. In an era whe...
Jenny Stirland
Mindshare UK
A key objective at Mindshare is driving Good Growth, something Jenny is firmly passionate about, as Good Growth drives innovative media strategies which makes for exciting campaigns and great client results. Jenny uses her position as digital lead across the agency’s biggest clients to champion making media more than just about click-t...
Mentor of the Year
Katie Hunter
Karmarama
Katie is the talent behind the growth and delivery of social media, content and influencer campaigns for brands including The British Army, National Citizen Service and Arla. By integrating social elements with wider campaigns, Katie helps build closer audience connections via cultural conversations. It’s also Katie’s job to upskill K...
Bettina Garnier
The Upside
When Bettina joined The Upside, she was the only permanent female employee. Now it's a place where women thrive with 64% female employees and 43% POC. In addition to being a Strategy Director Bettina took on the role of Head of People, joining the management team in 2019 after she saw an opportunity to pay more attention to how the ...
Charlie Blum
MediaSense
Having joined MediaSense as employee number 5, Charlie has taken it upon herself to build a culture that has been instrumental in the company’s growth and ongoing success. While Charlie’s day-to-day responsibilities lie in delivering media recommendations to some of the UK’s largest advertisers, her passion and vocation at MediaSens...
Hayley Ballard
Mindshare Worldwide
Prior to Mindshare I qualified in mentorship schemes and set up and led a “Women in the workplace” group to help support women of all ages and allow them to “buddy” up across teams. I joined Mindshare six months ago and here I have created the Knowledge exchange sessions”; these focus on sharing skills and knowledge across teams to cre...
Rita Harnett
WAVEMAKER
With 15+ years of experience, Rita is one of Wavemaker’s foremost ecommerce experts. She has worked with Tiffany, Ikea, LVMH, L'Oréal and Mondelez covering ecommerce strategies for all routes to market across Amazon, e-retail and DTC touchpoints. She is a sought-after speaker and has published her thoughts in The Grocer, Retail Gazette...
Victoria Usher
GingerMay
With the passionate belief that leadership carries the responsibility of empowering others, Victoria Usher, CEO and Founder of GingerMay – a multi-award winning, international PR consultancy established in 2010 – dedicates 10% of her very busy schedule to mentoring programmes. Whether nurturing industry professionals or supporting futu...
Rising to the Top - Advertising
Xi Yin Chen
VCCP
Xi is an account director at VCCP and moved onto the Virgin Media O2 team this year to help launch Volt - a fully integrated campaign for Virgin Media O2’s first joint proposition. She was instrumental in navigating the coming together of two superbrands and the inevitable challenges that come with such a task. Xi has also been an infl...
Ellis Cook
Channel 4
Growing up I never imagined I’d work in TV. Typically, the representation I had seen in corporate media didn’t reflect my background. I thought my accent would be perceived as uneducated and lack of experience would hold me back. But in 2019 I was hired by the Traffic team, responsible for managing campaigns and maximising revenue from...
Francesca Roberts
Iris London
My focus and determination has led me to where I am today. A pivotal moment for me was in 2017 when I was given the opportunity to solo produce a big budget campaign for a large tech brand. This was entrusted to me by a career-long female role model who saw my potential and let me run with it. As part of our DE&I strategy at Iris, my t...
Freena Tailor
Mail Metro Media
Mail Metro Media’s Junior Insight Executive, Freena Tailor graduated with First-Class Honours in Magazine Journalism & Publishing at University of Arts London. After a year of working in retail post-graduating, she had a hunger for more and applied for a programme at Brixton Finishing School. She quickly realised what an amazing oppor...
Jael Makelemi
Nubiart & Cult LDN
Being told at 10 that I shouldn't be a creative because 'it isn't a career' and I'd 'never be successful', nearly broke my spirit. Creativity has always been my passion so I was determined to uplift, carve spaces and show future creatives that they can be and do anything regardless of what people say. I took an unconventional route i...
Jenny Shevlin
Reach Solutions
In 2016, Jenny Shevlin joined Reach’s Invention team as a Planner; in just 5 years she was promoted twice, and is now Planning Director. She has developed her planning skills, forged key relationships, and stepped into a management role - all whilst being an expert in the audiences of an ever-expanding portfolio of over 200 media brand...
Rebecca Pinn
Wunderman Thompson UK
Rebecca is an incredibly curious and considerate Senior Strategist who’s blossomed into a thoughtful leader. Empathy is her superpower; she believes in harnessing its positive effects. In the last year she’s co-founded and leads Wunderman Thompson’s RISE women’s network supporting over 300 women and sat on the inclusion board. Throu...
Rising to the Top - Marketing
Flo Ward
Digitas
Flo is a data & insights manager at Digitas with 5 years’ experience working in digital marketing and media. Back from a winter sabbatical when she completed a world record breaking row across the Atlantic Ocean (raising £15k+ for charity), she has helped win pitches for Nivea Always-on Social and the £4m Samsung CRM account, acted as ...
Bekkie Hull
Two Stories
Bekkie became a Creative Director and Co-Founder of Brand Consultancy and Design Studio Two Stories at 24, pushing through conventional age and gender barriers to achieve her ambition of having her own successful studio. Launching Two Stories’ in late 2019, despite the pandemic, in just two years she has grown the business to alread...
Ellie Mack
Wolfenden
In under five years, Ellie Mack has progressed from a graduate to Digital PR Director and a position on the board of a 40-person strong digital agency working with clients such as Seasalt Cornwall, Sealskinz and Boy London. From being just the 9th member of the agency in 2016, Ellie now leads the biggest – and most profitable – team in...
Ivana Popova
dentsu
Having a positive impact on the business is not about how much experience you have. It’s about having a big vision and actively working towards it. Ivana Popova is one of those people who jump over the frontier of what is expected from them to transform the way we approach our clients and projects alike. What sets her apart is her n...
Lucinda Brooke
The Upside
Having started her career at Goldman Sachs, Lucinda felt this didn’t align with her values, pivoted into marketing and quickly progressed to ‘Principal Innovation Strategist’ following 3 accelerated promotions. Driven to make a positive impact, Lucinda is an advocate for ‘better business’ for people and planet. She pushes Google to ...
Meabh Crehan
One Agency Media
Since entering the marketing industry through a placement year in 2015, and graduating in Marketing Management from Manchester Metropolitan University, Meabh has established herself as a confident and results-driven communicator with a track record of delivering creative campaigns and original formats to clients across B2B, B2C and not...
Olivia Wedderburn
TMW Unlimited
Olivia heads up TMW Unlimited’s Social and Influence team, and acts as a valuable social lead for the wider Unlimited group remit, shaping the strategic direction for the businesses multitude of clients. Sitting on the Strategy Leadership Team, she is responsible for ensuring the execution of best-in-class social content, community man...
Rising to the Top - Media
Emily Trenouth
MediaCom
Emily has built trusting relationships with clients including Mars, Coca-Cola, LVMH, Dulux and Sky. Emily has cultivated a culture of success and teamwork, resulting in her being promoted to Director in early 2021. Emily set up a “Gen Z Collective'' within the agency. This is an Influencer Marketing and Gaming-driven focus group with...
Charlotte Dexter-Jones
Mindshare Worldwide
Charlotte’s passion for spearheading Good Growth for Mindshare and its clients resulted in her kickstarting her role by focusing on process efficiencies and upskilling team members. In a majority female team, Charlotte accelerated her juniors to a position of promotion and ensured they were considered exemplary programmatic role models...
Claire Linford
OMD UK
Claire is influential in a multitude of ways. Firstly, she is driving best-in-class research and measurement solutions for Google, one of the biggest brands in the world, in addition to producing outstanding work consistently outside of her work on this client. Secondly, she is front-and-centre in driving a creative and positive cult...
Hannah Shelley
ENGINE
Hannah has had a game-changing impact at Engine Creative this year. Hannah joined the Account Management and New Business teams at Engine Creative in 2018 supporting campaigns for Sky Mobile, Cazoo and Warburtons. In 2020 she joined the talented post-production team at Engine Film as Team Assistant.A key objective this past year was re...
Lucinda Droulers
MiQ
In her time with us, Lucy has far exceeded our hopes for her and her role. She’s shown that she’s comfortable with any client, she’s comfortable running a large team, and she gets results seemingly without effort. There aren’t many people who can lead an execution layer in a business to such a high standard. Promoting her to Head of Ac...
Siobhan Mcdade
Jungle Creations
As Jungle Creations’ Brand Development Director Siobhan oversees the daily output across the company’s six media brands, which have 121 million followers combined across social platforms, and leads the brand positioning, devising strategies to build new audiences, grow new markets, maximise brand revenue and extend the media brands bey...
Rising to the Top - Technology
Taisiya Merkulova
Captify
In 2018 Taisiya was selected as one of the 20 Women in Data and Tech for building her own DMP and enhancing the marketing data science capabilities at Photobox.Since joining Captify, Taisiya has built a new global team that focuses on key performance pillars - data, product, partners and supply. The team is central to innovation and op...
Alexis Scott
MediaSense
Alexis has been an Account Director at MediaSense for just over a year and is already making a significant impact in the role; leading our UK analyst team and managing key global pitch accounts. A mature, friendly, and common sense approach has allowed Alexis to excel at managing and motivating a team through a period of heavy growt...
Amy Williams
Good-Loop
Amy Wiliams has helped to put brand purpose firmly on the agenda in Adland, creating Good-Loop, an ad tech platform that’s transforming advertising into a force for good. It does this through its purpose-powered ad formats, which convert people’s attention to advertising into free donations to good causes. Under Williams’ leaders...
Bex Cross
DCTR
From a standing start, Bex (just turned 27), has built a new department & income stream that’s on course to become 50% of our agency turnover. Within 12 months, Bex has built a formidable 3D artist and Account team from scratch and taken on some of the biggest house building and Real Estate clients in the industry. Bex was hired...
Maya Tank
DoubleVerify
Maya Tank, Business Director at DoubleVerify is an asset to both the business and the wider industry. Maya consistently hits her performance targets and is responsible for exponential growth across DoubleVerify’s EMEA operations. Through her unique approach, Maya has single handedly: Won a new challenger agency (Bicycle London), create...
Tanisha Sharma
News UK
Tanisha Sharma is a Business Analyst at News UK, leading the newsroom transformation analysis for our Times and Sunday Times newsrooms. Previously, Tanisha was working on one of the most essential teams to support our Sun newsroom where she helped with launch of Sun US site, built a new Live Blogs tool, drove migration of CMP for 8 sit...
Transforming Technology
Kate Tancred
Untold Fable
Kate’s frustration at the lack of diversity in advertising and production led her to not just being vocal (having spoken on the issue on BBC, Bloomberg, Cannes Film Festival, DMexco, New Fronts, LDV Summit) but to provide a solution that would create tangible change for brands, talent and society. After 10 years driving the efficienc...
Hannah Wright
Iris London
Over the past 4.5 years at Iris, I’ve transitioned from a Senior Data Analyst to Head of Data, overseeing a large team across all end-to-end data solutions from Data Science to Strategic Analytics and everything in between. In the last year, the team has grown by 62% and our technical capabilities have deepened and broadened significan...
Alex Wright
Channel 4
I joined Channel 4 in 2019 with a strong digital media background, tasked with a substantial challenge of supercharging digital revenue growth through the development of new tech solutions. My vision was to position Channel 4, a perceived ‘traditional’ UK broadcaster, and its digital advertising solutions against the global tech and ...
Laura Braithwaite & Kate Merritt
Liberty Hive
In March 2020 Kate and Laura registered Liberty Hive with Companies House. Their vision was to disrupt the media industry by dialling up flexibility in the workplace, made possible by creating a dedicated technology platform for media specialists. Launched in February 2021, Liberty Hive connects consultants and media businesses quickl...
Veronica Millan
MullenLowe Group
As one of only a handful of female and Latina CIOs in this industry, Veronica has always known her rightful place in the universe and the metaverse. She is a champion of business transformation and global collaboration who was responsible for successfully transitioning a network of approximately 6400 people, in 90+ offices across 65+ c...
Visionary Business Leader
Jackie Stevenson
The Brooklyn Brothers
Jackie co-founded The Brooklyn Brothers 10 years ago, establishing a collaborative, culturally attuned agency growing it in to a 180-person strong ad agency serving some of the world’s best-known brands, subsequently leading it through its acquisition by IPG. The agency has redefined advertising by creating work that earns attention wi...
Debbie Ellison
VMLY&R Commerce
One of only a handful of female Global Chief Digital Officers in industry, Debbie’s visionary leadership was first recognised in 2016 as a Woman of Tomorrow by Campaign/IPA. Debbie has since been named Industry Shaper by the global Women in Marketing Awards [2019], Top Ten Inspirational Leader in 2021/ HSBC Ethnicity Awards and recogni...
Hannah Stockton
OMD UK
Hannah is a leader who knows that possessing a vision isn’t the same as making it a reality. As a team builder and team leader, she’s the rare example of someone who can do both – bringing people together in service of a higher goal and helping them get there, inch by inch – whether it’s answering a brief, improving our agency or bette...
Karin Seymour
News UK
In the past year, Karin Seymour has transformed her team’s approach to client relationships, whilst influencing the business to advance the cause of mums, dads and carers at News UK. When News UK asked people to nominate the most inspirational women in the business for International Women’s Day, Karin received more nominations than ...
Liz Barnsdale
Accenture Interactive
If responsibility for a client portfolio worth $68m was not enough, Liz Barnsdale also serves as Accenture Interactive’s European Inclusion and Diversity executive sponsor. Her message is "Get Uncomfortable" and it’s also the name of her initiative, speaking directly to employees who may want to be part of I&D efforts, but don’t nec...
Company Categories
Diverse-Inclusive Workplace
MediaCom
For many years, we’ve been focused on inclusion at MediaCom. Our gender diversity at senior levels, for example, has historically been good, with 3 of our 6 CEOs having been women – as is 50% of our current senior management. At the start of 2020, MediaCom’s CEO Kate Rowlinson announced the agency’s vision to be the most diverse and ...
Mindshare Worldwide & UK
Mindshare champions diversity, equity and inclusion and its efforts are embodied by the Collective – the employee-led DEI initiative - which drives productive conversations, visible change and employee-driven actions centred on intersectional diversity. Its two main aims; improve diversity in the industry and engage more people in the...
OLIVER Agency
OLIVER is the world’s first and only company to design, build, and run bespoke in-house agencies for brands. With a model requires building close and transparent relationships, diversity and inclusivity is at the core of everything we do. OLIVER and the Inside Ideas Group has 3,400 colleagues and 200+ clients across 46 countries. Th...
OMD EMEA
OMD EMEA has over 400 people from a range of countries, cultures, and ethnicities and we strive to foster a sense of belonging for everyone throughout their employee lifecycle. In 2020 we launched our annual DE&I magazine to share our overarching strategy, plans, and progress, supplemented by a quarterly newsletter for updates on ini...
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PrettyGreen
We are nominating our co-CEO Jessica Hargreaves, PrettyGreen Board lead for diversity and inclusion for the Campaign Influential list. Under her leadership, the agency has overhauled many elements of their practices and procedures as a best place to work. Our company vision is to deliver Less Ordinary and embrace diverse thinking acros...
The Social Element
From its origins in 2002, The Social Element has curated a mutually supportive and caring culture that values new ideas, ways of thinking and - most of all - its people. Not only is the business woman-owned,it is also women-led. All five of the agency's executive positions are filled by a team of incredibly connected, inspiring wome...
VMLY&R Commerce UK
Our strategy is rigorous and relentless. Year on year we bake new initiatives into our journey to push boundaries. At agency launch in 2013, leadership joined WPP Roots’ steering committee to champion greater ethnic, cultural diversity in the creative industries. From the onset, leadership has worked with Inspiring the Future/ l...
Health & Wellbeing Awards
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The Upside
Holistic wellbeing is core to The Upside. One of our values, ‘Strong Bodies, Strong Minds’, is an everyday reminder of the connection between wellbeing and success at work. Our people strategy 'energizing everyone everyday' is centered in wellbeing. It's been proven that when people work to their strengths, they’re more energized and...
Mindshare Worldwide & UK
Mindshare puts the well-being of its employees first, it acknowledges that people are an agency’s number one priority and only through supporting and nurturing those people can they reach their true potential. With hybrid-working posing new well-being challenges, the ‘Balance’ initiative has adapted to improve employee engagement, bui...
