Gemma Phillips

Creative Director

With twenty years in advertising, including eight as a Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi, I have built a career at the intersection of world-class creativity and meaningful cultural impact. My work is driven by a clear ambition: to use creativity as a force to change systems, shift policy and transform how society sees women, parents and caregivers.

In 2020, I authored ‘The Mother of All Problems’, a report that became a catalyst for industry reform. What started inside Saatchi & Saatchi, scaled rapidly to Publicis Groupe, where I helped establish one of the most progressive parental-support frameworks in the industry now benefiting more than 5,000 employees across 32 agencies. It raised the standard for what equitable support in the creative industries should look like. Since 2022, as Creative Director at Pregnant Then Screwed, I’ve led bold, high-craft national campaigns that have influenced government policy and dominated cultural conversation. ‘Cry For Help’, our childcare campaign, helped secure £4bn of government investment and headlined the BBC 10 o’clock news. ‘Career Shredder’, a category-breaking digital/physical idea, shredded 74,000 CVs, sparked a national ‘me too’ moment for working women and created parliamentary pressure ahead of new employment legislation. Our latest campaign, ‘Mother F**ker’, became the organisation’s most viral to date, exposing the UK’s broken paternity system during a critical government review. I’m now partnering with the Eye Mama Project, the world’s largest visual archive of motherhood, helping shape the future strategic and creative direction of the project.