Isobar Bolsters Leadership Team with Two Key Hires

Digital agency Isobar has announced the appointment of two key executives to its leadership team. Jory Edmunds joins as chief strategy officer and MaryAnn Hoadley joins as senior vice president of federal business development. Jory and MaryAnn will report directly to CEO, Deb Boyda. Both are newly created positions and are effective immediately.

“MaryAnn and Jory both bring a unique skillset to the Isobar team that enables us to grow and evolve to better meet the needs of our clients,” said Deb Boyda. “A strong and strategic leadership team inspires game-changing work and bringing on MaryAnn and Jory will be excellent additions to the team. The Federal space is one that we’ve had a long and impressive history in and, with MaryAnn’s hire, we will continue to build an even larger portfolio of federal clients. Bringing on Jory underscores our commitment to strategy across the board and we look forward to progressing the way we approach our clients’ business transformations. Jory has an unprecedented command of storytelling which will enable us to reimagine the way we look at the evolution of a brand.” 

As chief strategy officer, Jory will lead Isobar’s strategy discipline and drive how the agency utilises insights to develop solutions that grow its clients’ businesses. He will also evolve Isobar’s current offering in a manner that bridges both consumer insight strategy as well as business strategy, in service of making recommendations to its clients for how experience-led transformation can grow their business. He will focus on growth and elevating strategic thinking for new and existing clients across the entire Isobar Group.

Before joining Isobar, Jory was the senior director of global brand strategy and insights at Indeed and, prior to that, was the group vice president of brand strategy at SapientRazorfish. Throughout his career, he has worked with a number of high-profile brands including Patron Tequila, Neiman Marcus, Audi, Dove, Kraft Foods, Starwood Hotels, Samsung, USAA and Citi. 

“I was drawn to Isobar’s appreciation for data and technology that’s equal to its passion for human insight and exceptional creativity,” said Jory. “Isobar has an arsenal of tools at its disposal when it comes to strategy and I look forward to helping connect those in a bigger way to solve bigger problems for clients.”

In her role as SVP, federal business development, MaryAnn will work to leverage Isobar’s 20-year history providing digital transformation to the Air Force and Army to address other federal agencies IT modernisation challenges. She will oversee the implementation of Isobar’s unique approach to using creativity and innovation combined with emerging technology solutions to provide options for the development of systems using a human-centric approach permitting early adoption and realising cost savings and improved performance. Isobar has a longstanding history of leveraging sophisticated technology solutions to advance the operations of our federal clients and MaryAnn will continue to make that a priority, while also identifying new opportunities to bring these capabilities to new clients. Prior to Isobar, MaryAnn worked as SVP, business development at Koniag Government Services and Subsytem Technologies Inc. Prior to those roles, she was VP of western operations at Acentia.

“Too often I have witnessed the Federal Government’s investment in new systems that have not factored in the end user, resulting in weak adoption,” said MaryAnn. “I truly believe Isobar’s Human-full approach addresses this issue in a meaningful way. I’m looking forward to working closely with Isobar’s creative and innovation teams to understand how our commercial expertise can be applied to deliver information and services anytime, anywhere and on any platform or device.”

These new hires follow Ricardo Salema’s promotion to Isobar US’ first-ever chief creative officer earlier this year.