I’m an Australian who’s been living and working in New York since 2014.

Everyone has their own ‘how I got into advertising’ story. This is mine.

Growing up, I always loved reading, daydreaming and writing stories. Then I somehow found myself studying economics at university.

I quickly learned two things: I was nowhere near good enough at math to seriously consider a career as an economist. And the science of economics had a dirty secret: people are highly irrational and most purchasing decisions are based on emotion, not logic.

So my childhood passions and my newfound fascination with human behavior led me to advertising’s doorstep.

I was lucky enough to get a job as a writer in a (very) small agency, and even luckier enough to eventually build a career. Mostly in Australia, where I worked my way up to ECD in network agencies before taking the plunge to build an independent agency in Melbourne with two partners who are still great friends.

We were naïve enough to believe that if we remained ourselves and worked incredibly hard, it’d turn out great. Amazingly, it did. In 2011 we were purchased by McCann to take over their operations in Australia. Which weren’t in great shape.

I’ve always believed that good things happen when you have delusional levels of ambition, so I set a goal for us to do ‘the most interesting work’ in Australia inside three years.

Two years later we were the No.1 ranked creative agency in the world.

In 2014, Rob Reilly joined McCann Worldgroup and asked me to come to New York to take on a global role in the network.

That role saw me lead global creative for Microsoft. We’d just won the business, so I had to build the machine, and oversee the launch of many of their most important products for a decade.

Not long after, I was elevated to President of the global Creative Leadership Council for McCann Worldgroup. The opportunity to lead, collaborate with and inspire our creative leads from every office in the world, to touch every global brand, and to make our very best work even better was an incredible honor. I held this role from 2016 to 2023.

And along the way, McCann Worldgroup had by far the best creative period in its history. 18 Cannes Grand Prix, multiple Network of the Year honors including its first-ever Cannes NOTY, multiple Effie Network of the Year honors and just as importantly, a culture of creativity that permeated the entire network.

In addition to leading the Global CLC, I also led global creative for Reckitt from 2017 to September 2023. During this period we grew the business from a single brand in North America to becoming AOR globally for seven brands.

I still love writing and creating, and despite being given big titles I’ve never given that up. I think it’s important that even though your job is to make others shine, leaders should still be able to do.

But I absolutely love helping others make great work. Sure, this is a talent business. But at least in my experience, it’s the behaviors we buy into that make the difference between doing decent work and making the really good stuff.

So I’m big on instilling behaviors and cultures that give creativity a fighting chance to thrive. Not just inside the agency, but inside client organizations too. Anything and everything in service of making the work as good as it can be.

Heavily related to the job, I currently serve on the Advisory Board for ACT Responsible (the industry’s leading organization to promote social responsibility and sustainable development within our industry), the D&AD Global Advisory Board, and led the McCann Worldgroup DE&I Creative Leadership Initiative since its inception in 2019.

Aside from work, I have two daughters who are scarily like me and also nothing like me, which I find odd. A wife who is the most impressive person I’ve ever known. And two dogs, both rescues, one of whom has me completely and utterly at her mercy. And I’m good with that.