Wunderman Thompson Strengthens North America Leadership Team

The newly created WPP agency Wunderman Thompson has announced additional appointments of its North America leadership team. This new team is a talented group of executives who have individual histories of building and growing business, and a unique breadth of end-to-end capabilities that will help drive growth for the agency’s clients and people by delivering breakthrough creativity, data and emerging technology to reset customer experiences.

Wunderman Thompson North America CEO Shane Atchison has announced the following:

Seasoned executive Melissa Dorko has been appointed chief growth officer, North America.

Liz Valentine, the high-profile CEO of Swift, has been appointed CEO of Wunderman Thompson West.

Carrie Philpott, formerly of Huge Atlanta, has been appointed president of Wunderman Thompson Atlanta.

Of the appointments, Shane said: “Melissa, Liz, and Carrie are hands down some of the best and brightest minds in the industry. They each bring unique viewpoints and deep experience to our agency with histories of growing businesses, advising the world’s most celebrated brands, and a relentless focus on culture. Each of them will be a key part of Wunderman Thompson’s success going forward – I can’t wait to see their impact on our business.”

Melissa Dorko, chief growth officer, NA, is responsible for new business outreach and business development, joining the team from Isobar as former chief growth officer. Melissa has over 17 years of experience driving growth for companies. Prior to Isobar, Melissa was the vice president, North American business development at Sapient Razorfish. Prior to that, she held business development positions at Resource Interactive (now IBM ix) and Fitch. As a consumer experience and digital business development leader, Melissa’s expertise ranges from branding, strategy, creative, store design, ecommerce and digital marketing initiatives for B2B and B2C brands.

Liz Valentine, CEO and co-founder of WPP digital agency Swift, has been appointed CEO of Wunderman Thompson West where, in addition to Swift, Liz will be responsible for the strategic vision, growth, operations, and client relations of Wunderman Thompson’s California, Seattle, and Denver offices, as well as the mobile business.

Carrie Philpott, president, Wunderman Thompson Atlanta, has over 20 years of agency experience, leading large global client engagements and teams across work inclusive of digital product design and development, integrated marketing and brand campaigns, CRM, media, and analytics.  Prior to Wunderman Thompson, Carrie was the managing director of Huge Atlanta where she drove business growth for clients including Turner Sports, Lowe’s Home Improvement, UPS, PGA of America, CNN, Randstad, and Perfetti Van Melle.

These new appointments follow the announcement from Wunderman Thompson NA earlier this year of Michael Steiger as chief talent officer, Robyn Tombacher as chief operations officer, Brandon Geary as chief strategy officer, Adam Foulsham as chief financial officer and Jason Burby as chief client officer.  Ian Sohn was also appointed CEO of Wunderman Thompson’s central region.