L&C New York Hires Kelly Stevens as First Managing Director

Fast-growing creative agency L&C New York has added key senior leadership with the hire of Kelly Stevens as a new partner to serve as its first managing director.

In the newly-created role, she will be responsible for guiding marketing and management of the agency as it grows due to new business and organic growth from existing clients. In the past year, L&C has done successful creative campaigns for leading brands including Dole, GE Lighting, Spinmaster and others.

Stevens brings solid marketing and brand management experience to L&C, most recently as managing director at Spring Studio New York, where she led the successful pitch and development of TikTok’s B2B campaign celebrating the most breakthrough CMOs on the platform in 2021.

Prior to that, she held CMO positions at YARD NYC and The&Partnership, was brand director at FIG, spent seven years at Omnicom’s Merkley+Partners New York leading brand and retail communications for Mercedes-Benz, and served in account positions at Los Angeles offices of Team One, Y&R, Ogilvy and TBWA\Chiat Day. 

“We worked with Kelly on projects last summer, and realized we share a common dream, creative sensibility, and work ethic,” said Rolando Cordova, co-founder, CCO, L&C. “She has the humility, ingenuity and grit that L&C was founded upon, and made a big impact in a short amount of time.  As we considered who to bring on as our partner this year, it was just a really natural fit.”

Her time at FIG and as consultant with JOAN when those agencies were launching gives Stevens an understanding of what it takes to compete as a new agency and build infrastructure as clients are added to the roster.

“Successful agencies are the ones that reinvent themselves at the pace of culture,” said Stevens.  “L&C is bringing the right offering at the right time, creating brand ideas that break cultural and geographical barriers with a workforce and production model to match. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the agency’s future and how it will shape our industry.”

Gian Lanfranco, co-founder, CEO, added that her industry expertise is both wide and deep, with the versatility and hands-on approach that makes her the perfect leader and partner as L&C starts its next chapter.

“We’ve proven we can be a creative player in the competitive US market, and Kelly will help us rise to the next level,” he said.  “Our next step is to continue doing great work – which will always be our #1 priority – and build the right talent infrastructure to support our clients on a larger scale while innovating a global way of working that COVID and the great resignation have enabled.”