Winners 2023
Individual Categories
CEO of the Year
Karen Stacey
Digital Cinema Media
Karen Stacey’s 35 year career spans TV, radio, digital and magazines. So when she took the reins at DCM she couldn’t wait to apply her leadership learnings to cinema - a powerful medium whose light was most definitely being hidden under the pro-verbial bushel. What the market saw was an ‘old fashioned’ medium with ‘nice’ people to do...
Claire Humphris
Iris
22 years at the agency, 18 months as CEO, it’s impossible to not think of Iris without thinking of Claire Humphris. Her journey is one defined by her commitment to progressing an agency she founded, pushing conversations in the industry, and making a meaningful mark on the world around her. From leading the government campaigns ...
Kelly Parker
Wavemaker UK
As CEO of Wavemaker UK, one of the world’s biggest media agencies, Kelly works with every area of the business to deliver unrivalled work for our clients. But Kelly isn’t just another CEO who operates from the top of a triangle, she is the epitome of a leader who leads from the centre of a circle. Her human nature means that she is ...
Natalie Bell
MG OMD
Now in her second full year as CEO of the UK’s second largest media agency, Natalie’s continuous dedication to creating difference that matters for the industry, MG’s clients, and her people, puts MG OMD firmly as the best media agency in the UK right now.
Tamara Littleton
The Social Element
Tamara Littleton is the CEO we all want to work for. She drives success forwards in a company that prizes people above all else. CEO of The Social Element, she is a social media pioneer, crisis expert and LGBTQIA+ champion. An award-winning business with a culturally, ethnically, neuro and gender diverse makeup, it helps some of the wo...
Conquering Creativity
Helen Jones
Shelter
After a successful career in advertising, Helen took a big pay cut to set up an industry leading, in-house agency at Shelter. Since then, she has consistently championed in-house teams, and purpose led creative, leading many talks and debates on the subjects. When she joined Shelter, there was a very low 40% satisfaction rate in the ex...
Emily Gosen
Ketchum UK
Influence is about changing the narrative in the hope to make lives, experiences and creativity better for those around us. This is exactly what Emily has done in the past 12 months. And not the easy way round. Because PR has, for a long time, suffered, as the ‘poor creative cousin’ to ad and creative agencies, but this is somet...
Emily Rule
Wunderman Thompson UK
When it comes to setting the strategic standard for Wunderman Thompson, Emily Rule(s) the roost. Since joining the agency she’s taken on responsibility for guiding one of the UK’s largest integrated planning departments and is the strategic lead for WT’s global HSBC account, one of the agency’s most awarded clients for creativity. E...
Georgina Bacchus
Vice Media Group
Georgina is the Creative driving force behind VICE Media Group's UK Commercial output and a leading creative voice in the Global fashion industry, spearheading brand work for the iconic i-D brand. VMG is a business that is recognised across the media industry for our ability to create unique, stand out content. Georgina drives that mis...
Kate Lynham
Unit 9
On a mission to fuse digital and physical elements together to craft brand experiences with serious wow factor, Kate is one of UNIT9’s most dynamic creative weapons. Coming from an architectural background, she has worked hard over the years to expand her creative skills and add a number of tools to her wide and varied arsenal, includi...
Michelle Craig
Unit 9
As Co-Founder, Director, Writer and Creative Director at UNIT9, Michelle is a multiskilled creative and highly-esteemed leader with big ambitions and unparalleled passion. From film to experiential, she carries her empathetic approach to direction across every project she touches. Her award-winning and wide-ranging work - from creating...
Shelley Smoler
Droga5 UK
Droga5’s first ever female Chief Creative Officer Shelley Smoler was undaunted by the challenge of taking the helm of a major creative department. She has hit the ground running, focusing on developing award-winning creative work and leading her team to significant wins, in addition to chairing the Campaign Big Awards. Committed to ...
Tamara Cross
MGOMD
After the rollercoaster that was 2020-2021, Tamara, started 2022 determined to make it the most creatively successful year ever for MG OMD, an agency founded on the commitment to “put imagination back into media”.
Entrepreneur of the Year
Liz Stone
OK COOL
Liz Stone is an entrepreneur whose career is dedicated to future-proofing brands in a rapidly changing digital world while simultaneously elevating female talent through global mentoring programmes. Liz is the co-founder at OK COOL, an award-winning creative agency that specialises in campaigns for digital, social and emerging platfo...
Charlotte Gentry
Pure Communications Group
Charlotte is a sole events agency owner, and despite having her first child at 45 during the pandemic she managed to drive, inspire and energise her team and the industry during Covid and in 2022. She has not just survived this torrid time, but her business has bounced back to have a record breaking year in 2022. Charlotte is one of...
Making Media Matter
Zoe Bowen-Jones
Wavemaker UK
Zoe is a Senior Insights Director in Wavemaker's global team. Her role is to deliver insights which inform media decisions and ultimately deliver growth for clients. The strength of her work has been demonstrated by leading insights for clients wins including Doordash, L'Oréal, and Beiersdorf. She believes in the power of media as a ...
Emma Withington
MGOMD
Emma is a rare gem in the industry. An affable, pragmatic, approachable planner who genuinely loves media and is excited by the ever-evolving industry and how we can connect authentically with consumers to grow our clients’ brands and businesses.
Josie Ung
Mindshare
People are at the heart of every solution we create at Mindshare. But people are complex, and we all define ourselves in different ways. Our media strategies must embrace that nuance, but also seek to find common ground – telling stories that transcend difference, even when drawn from or celebrating a particular culture. Through her l...
Karen Nelson-Field
Amplified Intelligence
A dedicated agent of media change An academic, technology innovator and relentless change maker, Karen Nelson-Field is working to transform digital media measurement. Since founding Amplified Intelligence in 2017, she has taken the helm as CEO and worked to achieve a global mission: refocusing how advertising effectiveness is quantifi...
Marine Rabeau
Zenith
Clients Marine continually pushes boundaries to make media a growth driver for brands. She led her team in guideline development that enabled Essity to maximise visibility in an inflationary marketplace, put consumer intent at the heart of their plans, and create seamless omnichannel consumer experiences. She led a global two-day w...
Olya Dyachuk
Heineken
Olya Dyachuk’s dynamic leadership and actions embody the spirit of this award. With a clear vision, high energy, and empathy she has created an outstanding team - Data Driven Media (DDM) - who share in a mission: to use media as a lever of growth and a force for positive change within Heineken and beyond. Olya arrived as Heineken UK...
Wanju Lee
Starcom
Ju is everyone’s go-to person – agency teams thrive under her leadership and clients cannot live without her. Since arriving from Starcom Melbourne in 2017, Ju set about making a unique impression on the London office. She combines sharp analytical thinking, a warm, approachable nature and shrewd business understanding to get under the...
Mentor of the Year
Emma Harris
Glow London
Emma is one of life's natural born mentors. Outside of her role as Commander-in-Chief of a brand consultancy, a board member of a global social media agency, a mother, wife and friend, she uses her incredible skill as a coach and NLP practitioner to officially mentor and guide some of the industry’s greatest and brightest talent. But n...
Helen Lee
Wunderman Thompson UK
As if it wasn’t enough to be Head of New Business & Marketing, Helen Lee’s passion to see other women reach their full potential at Wunderman Thompson UK sets her apart from the rest. After co-founding RISE, WT’s women’s network, this year Helen launched Magpie – a mentoring app, but not as you know it. Imagine being able to tap int...
Kamila Jania
SmartBear
Kamila Jania has been a UX designer for eight years. She is focused on accessibility, creating user-centric and meaningful experiences. She has been UX Design Manager at SmartBear, a leading provider of software development and visibility tools, for more than a year. There are few UX internship opportunities offered in Poland. Postg...
Transforming Technology
Amelia Waddington
Captify
Amelia is Captify’s SVP of Product, leading 57 employees across global product, technology and insights teams. She has impressive technical expertise—with 10+ years product experience and a Computational Neuroscience PhD from Leeds University. Her vision is to transform Captify’s Search Intelligence—unlocking competitive advantage for ...
FINALIST: Charlotte Gentry
The IVF Network
Charlotte has built a platform designed to deliver the best knowledge from the best fertility experts in the UK to enable people to make the best decisions to get them to their end goal of having a family faster. This platform is called The IVF Network. Charlotte's mission is for The IVF Network to become the global number 1 resource t...
Grace Hammond
Sound Out
Grace is the Head of Product at SoundOut, the world leader in strategic sonic testing for brands. Her goal in 2022 was to extend SoundOut’s consumer powered brand matching and archetype mapping technologies used in strategic sonic branding to the use of music in marketing. If this could be achieved it would, for the first time, enab...
Jo Eckersley
Bubbl
You’ll hear a lot of leadership executives talk about “leading with the heart” - particularly in the female founders space. Indeed, many such businesses are formed because they are very closely related to something the founder cares about as a human being, and wants to propagate to make our lives better. Jo Eckersley, CEO of Bubbl, ...
Kim Lawrie
House 337
A passionate evangelist for emerging tech, Kim has been laser-focused on evolving and elevating the creative technology offer at House 337. Tripling her team over the year, she led the development of the Innovation Framework, a bespoke algorithmic solution that better interrogates the strategies, briefs and challenges that clients brin...
Louise Crosby
News UK
Louise has driven significant innovation and transformation within News UK. Founding the Strategic Development team, which has developed the foundations of future revenue through advertising, Louise has pioneered the development of new technology to provide a higher quality reader experience, greater opportunity for brand clients, and ...
Rozzi Merrington
Wavemaker UK
Rozzi is a driven Innovation leader with a decade of experience delivering Innovation-led growth for brands. A WACL Future Leader winner, she’s worked with clients including Diageo, Mondelez, Unilever and Jaguar Land Rover. Whether it’s voice, chat, synthetic media, AR/VR, metaverse or gaming experiences, Rozzi guides teams through tes...
Visionary Business Leader
Tracey Barber
Havas
If you're looking for exceptional women, look no further. In 2021, Havas Creative grew 20% YOY, and as Global CMO, Tracey led with energy and compassion. She topped the new business rankings and led her team to their 4th New Business Team of the Year title! Since she became Global CMO, Havas has doubled the number of global pitches it...
Carol Chan
Comms8
Carol Chan is the Founder of Comms8, an award-winning marketing agency specialising in bridging global brands with Asian and Chinese audiences. Having a team of talented women with different cultural backgrounds in Comms8 and seeing the underrepresentation of female leaders in the industry, Carol is determined to reshape the imbalan...
Elif Pulcu Kile
Wavemaker UK
Ever enthusiastic to step out of her comfort zone whenever she finds herself with a slowing learning curve, her move to London was one such leap of faith. In the last four years, Elif not only adapted to the life of a global strategist moving from Istanbul to London but became an instrumental part of the team. She was leading the st...
Fran Luckin
Grey
Fran is Chief Creative Officer at Grey Advertising Africa and a member of Grey’s Global Creative Board. With an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, Fran was instrumental in reviving Grey in South Africa. Through her creative leadership and business acumen, she’s helped steer Grey to its most profitable, creatively succ...
Jane Rudling
Unlimited Group
A true industry trailblazer, Jane has made a career of using insight to inform meaningful marketing. At independent agency group, Unlimited, she has been given the backing, the team, and the tools to unleash the true power of human understanding. Jane always has an eye on what’s coming next. She runs The Brainy Bar, where industry e...
Philippa Snare
The Trade Desk
Philippa is Senior Vice President of EMEA at The Trade Desk, responsible for leading the regional operational headquarters, driving revenue generation and new client acquisition strategy. Through her 25 years in tech and advertising, Philippa is passionate about creating a digital media ecosystem that works and benefits all: broadcaste...
Diverse-Inclusive Workplace
Omnicom Media Group UK
At Omnicom Media Group UK (OMG), our vision is to be an agency group where difference is valued and everyone is able to thrive in a culture of equality, inclusion and belonging. We recognise the value and importance of driving initiatives at a group AND agency level - for each agency to celebrate and grow their own culture, so employee...
Ketchum UK
Ketchum UK is redefining what it means to be a large agency in communications today, by doing work that matters, with people committed to driving our award-winning Diversity Equity & Inclusion agenda forward. We don’t believe purpose and profit are mutually exclusive – in fact, we believe you can’t have one without the other. In 2022, ...
Digital Cinema Media
For our female-led, ethnically diverse Executive Board and our CEO Karen Stacey, the concept of an inclusive workplace doesn’t just mean having a diversity of people present, it means having a diversity of people deeply involved, developed, empowered and trusted by the company. DCM’s leadership team has set about breaking down barrie...
Iris
Building from our DE&I strategy ‘FOR THE FREE’, launched in 2020, 2021/2 was the year we got behind Iris Women – making sure we were a place where women wanted to work, felt supported and thrived. Fuelled by research, and keen to support diverse needs, we progressed in the following areas: Fertility/Parent initiatives, including n...
Mail Metro Media
At Mail Metro Media we are committed to championing diversity and inclusion, and fostering a culture of belonging. We believe our collective uniqueness enables us to be a better team that nurtures creativity, drives innovation, and unleashes our people’s potential, and our goal is to reflect the diversity of our audiences. We entered...
Rising To The Top
Rising to the Top - Advertising
Lorna Byrne
Acast
Lorna joined Acast just four and half years ago to an entry level position of Sales Planner with no previous media experience. In that short time she has risen meteorically through the organisation being deservedly promoted four times: (Sales Planner, Sales Executive, Account Manager, Account Director, Group Business Director). Lorna n...
Aime Hunter
Whalar
Aime has a knack for finding the future influencers of culture. In a short space of time in the Creator Economy space, she’s made a name for herself by championing creators of all stripes. She spearheaded an update to our tech platform which allowed us to be able to tag, find and report against enhanced diversity metrics. She f...
Jenny Spindler
Revolt London
Jenny leads Revolt’s biggest client and biggest department with a maturity and experience that belies her years. She manages to marry ambition for both her clients and her agency with a keen sense of empathy and inclusion. Her clients see her as a true partner, leading to breakthrough work and a deep, enduring client-agency relation...
Kenny Dada
VCCP
At 22, Kenny was made the youngest ever Board Member in the Watford Palace Theatre’s 110+ year history, and she became Vice Chair of this Board in 2022. In this role, she works closely with the theatre’s senior management teams in implementing strategies that ensure that the theatre’s creative output and community outreach are as inclu...
Saff Kelly
Born Social
I’m a feisty, conceptual creative, pushing big and bold ideas in the world of social. I’ve become known for having a punchy point of view with our clients, encouraging them to show a bit of creative bravery, break their own rules, make social campaigns work harder, and tackle tough subjects like sustainability. My vision is to create s...
Rising to the Top - Marketing
Rachel Goodacre
Jacobs
Rachel has been described as the powerhouse behind the successful internal and external marketing of Jacobs digital products, services, and solutions. She is leading best practice and global governance of the end-to-end product marketing process in supporting the company’s digital transformation through the identification of new income...
Beckii Flint
Pepper Studio
Beckii Flint is Director and Co-Founder of Pepper Studio, an award winning boutique influencer marketing agency. A veteran Influencer herself, Beckii Flint has been creating content online since the age of 12. Her first-hand experiences of the process behind the content give an invaluable insight into the needs of all parties involved ...
Ellie Woolmore
Avanti West Coast
Ellie is Head of Brand at Avanti West Coast, sitting on the Marketing Leadership Team where she is responsible for overseeing a team of five to manage and develop the brand proposition and visual identity to create an industry-leading brand. She has established herself as a passionate and talented brand specialist with a track record o...
Jade Cooper
Ketchum
Jade Cooper is an exceptional, future-thinking leader who has taken the Communications world by storm since starting her career in 2013. Now a Practice Director at Ketchum, studying for an MSc and apprenticeship in Business Management at Cranfield University (with three distinctions and counting), Jade continually challenges herself – ...
Rising to the Top - Media
Devora Mateeva
Starcom UK
Devi is the definition of a woman who has set herself apart from her peers, she’s bossing it on her clients, leading the charge on sustainability for her agency and client’s media plans. She is someone that every client wants to work with, and every employee wants to have on her team. Not only is Devi inspirational, with her contagious...
Amy Zwirn
Influencer
To be influential is to have great influence on someone or something. Influencing someone: Amy is regularly referred to, not only externally, but also internally as an exceptional role model to many within the influencer marketing industry. She is someone who focuses on putting her team's progression first and we have seen many new...
Ellen McPherson
MGOMD
Ellen is a rising voice for Gender Equality within the media industry. As Head of MG OMD’s Gender Taskforce, she has chaired a Q&A with renowned author Mary Ann Sieghart as part of Omnicom’s International Women’s Day breakfast and led the conversation with senior clients and CEOs from across OMG on how we can foster confidence in the n...
Emily Charlton-Smith
Anything is Possible
Emily has grown Anything is Possible’s social capabilities from predominantly Meta and Linkedin to full-scale social advertising across Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter, including forming agency partnerships with Meta, LinkedIn, Pinterest and TikTok Beta. She lifts up others wherever she goes. Her introduction of the agency’s ...
Evie Clifton
Mindshare UK
Evie is an Account Director, leading Paid Social for one of the largest accounts in the agency, managing to increase investment by 25% YoY. Due to her dedication, Evie has experienced rapid progression, advancing from a graduate with zero experience to an Account Director role in less than 2.5 years in media. Her strong development all...
Meg Ledger
Open Media
Truly well-rounded people – who excel at their job and make the world a better place for everyone around them – are very hard to find. That’s why it feels so special to work with Meg Ledger. Meg combines the best of what it means to Rise to the Top in media. She delivers excellent results (-8.7%: the tiniest drop in revenue ...
Shira Jeczmien
Screenshot Media
As Founder and CEO of SCREENSHOT Media, I oversee the development of the company across both our media and agency arms. My goal from the start was to create a next generation media company that covers news, trends and entertainment without ever compromising on the quality and standard of our content. Over the past 12 months we have see...
Yasmeen Frasso
Total Media
Yas has been in the industry just three years, spending under two of them at Total Media. In this short time through her sheer determination, drive, and out-of-the-box thinking, Yas has driven enormous success for her clients, the agency and her own career. We’ve laid out just a few of her achievements within this entry: from turning o...
Rising to the Top - Technology
Rachel Goodacre
Jacobs
Rachel has been described as the powerhouse behind the successful internal and external marketing of Jacobs digital products, services, and solutions. She is leading best practice and global governance of the end-to-end product marketing process in supporting the company’s digital transformation through the identification of new income...
Annabelle Ashton
News UK
Annabelle Ashton never stopped pursuing her childhood dream of becoming a designer. In spite of ongoing learning difficulties impacting her reading and writing abilities, she graduated from University of Bournemouth with a first class honours in Graphic Design before eventually landing her role as a Mid-Weight UI Designer for The Times...
Harriet Evans
Media Sense
Harriet first stepped into the media consultancy sector two years ago and in that time has quickly made her impact known with significant contributions to MediaSense’s product development programme. Recognising an opportunity to modernise the process, Harriet developed an automated assessment programme for a major global pharmaceuti...
Piper Heitzler
Amobee
At just 29 years old, Piper Heitzler hasn’t merely climbed the ranks of video advertising platform Amobee – now part of Tremor International – she’s played an integral role in the company’s rapid growth. As the Head of Growth, EMEA, she’s responsible for leading the business development and solutions engineering functions for the regio...
Rianne Lewis
News UK
Rianne Lewis’ three-year career journey as a Software Engineer has been a hugely inspirational one, replete with stories of breaking barriers, surmounting obstacles and achieving great successes. Rianne’s mindset is one of determination, resilience and a drive to success. She likes to call it a ‘growth mindset’ because she does not b...
