DDB Canada looked within and found its next generation of agency leadership, promoting three executives to head up the Toronto and Vancouver offices.
The moves were made following the departure of David Leonard as president and chief operating officer of DDB Canada at the end of March.
Patty Jones and Michelle Kitchen have been named executive vice-presidents and co-managing directors of DDB Canada Vancouver, while Melanie Johnston was named president of DDB Canada Toronto.
The appointments were made by Lance Saunders who was just named DDB Canada’s national president and chief operating officer when Leonard left DDB for MacLaren McCann. Saunders had previously been executive vice-president and managing director in Vancouver.
“Patty and Michelle are two passionate leaders, each with their own unique complementary skills; together, this duo will excel at the helm of our Vancouver office,” said Saunders in a release. “Our Toronto office has also experienced exponential growth, and Melanie has played an instrumental role in that context.”
Aside from the departure of Leonard, DDB experienced a change in its most senior creative ranks in September when Kevin Drew Davis decamped for DDB Chicago. Longtime Vancouver ECD Cosmo Campbell was promoted to fill his position on the org chart. Then, in December, DDB opened it’s own Montreal office (after two-plus years of a “strategic alliance” with bleublancrouge), a move triggered in part by picking up the Volkswagen account in late summer.
Jones has been with DDB Vancouver for 15 years, and Kitchen has 16 years split between the Toronto and Vancouver offices. Johnston has been with DDB for more than 10 years, most recently as SVP, managing director of the Toronto office making a key contribution to the Volkswagen win.
With these three promotions, DDB has women in charge at each of its four offices across the country. Aside from Jones and Kitchen in Vancouver and Johnston in Toronto, Helene Leggatt is president of DDB’s Edmonton office while Monique Brosseau is in charge of the agency’s Montreal office.
“DDB Canada is proud to advance gender equality in the workplace,” said Frank Palmer, chairman and CEO, DDB Canada, in a release. “We hire and promote our people based on individual talent and merit, and in each of these cases the best person for the job just happened to be a woman.”
