“This company can’t be any better or bigger than the growth of the people in it.”
There’s not one type of person who works at Leo Burnett. We’re all different and bring something unique to the table.
But you’ll know a Burnetter when you meet one.
Because we all aspire to carry on Leo’s legacy of being courageous, staying humble and having absolute belief in creative solutions that create change for the better.
The values we value.
As an agency and as individuals, we have four key principles that we aim to bring to our work every day. We call them the 4 Cs.
Eyes of a Child
The Child is made of curiosity, sincerity and joy. With Band-Aids on the knees, cheeks caked in chocolate and a head full of questions. A child knows professional wrestling is real.
Heart of a Champion
The Champion is all principles and bravery. They fight for what’s right, against what’s wrong and on behalf of their people. The champion believes in ideas.
Hand of a Craftsman
The Craftsman sees the things no one will notice but everyone will feel. They are relentless. Why? Because the craftsman knows what happens when somebody gives a damn.
Soul of a Citizen
The Citizen understands the responsibility they have to the people of the world. They draw people in versus pushing them away. The citizen will tell you when you have spinach in your teeth.
Building a workplace that reflects the world we live in.
It’s not enough to be a diverse workplace. Our people need to fearlessly bring their unique points of view to the table. It’s the only way our work can ever reach its fullest potential. We’re committed at all levels of our agency to growing a more inclusive Leo Burnett. Together with our parent company, Publicis Groupe, we’ve made a $50 million commitment to attract and grow Black talent, as we continue to nurture a culture of belonging in which our people feel empowered to bring their whole selves every day.
We support eight employee-created resource groups, representing different populations and helping to build a greater sense of belonging throughout the agency.
Our peer-reviewed Inclusivity Product Council challenges stereotypes in our work at all stages of the creative process.
Marcel, our AI-enabled platform, provides all employees with ongoing, anti-bias and cultural sensitivity training, along with live workshops, 30,000-plus online courses and conversations with industry change-makers.
We’re unwavering in our commitment to providing the Black community and people of color with more opportunity in creative fields through scholarships, mentorships and education-focused relationships.
We’ve formed an alliance with Free the Work, a talent-discovery platform for underrepresented creators, and are committed to awarding at least 25% of outsourced production to minority partners.
Our work will never be finished, but we’re proud of the recognition that our efforts have earned.
Our Leadership
Andrew Swinand
Chief Executive Officer
Here’s the first thing you need to know about Andrew: He has founded nine successful start-ups and exited seven of them. And he left to do this all after getting to a comfortable point in corporate life (from joining the Army at 17 to landing in brand management at P&G to becoming president of Starcom Mediavest Groupe). Andrew’s startups—focused on marketing personalization and analytics—came out of his restless energy and desire to lead the change in our industry. That same risk-taking, future-forward vision brought Andrew to the CEO role at Leo Burnett Group. Since taking the helm, Andrew has led both our business transformation and that of our clients by investing in data and technology while doubling down on creativity.
Matt Marcus
Chief Experience Officer
A creative at heart, Matt helps our clients tell stories through new technologies in nonlinear ways. He’s always on the lookout for the latest ways to transform customer experiences, gather first-party data sources and create new revenue streams. And if Matt can’t find a solution already in the world, he and his teams will make one themselves. (His office is littered with new ideas, business plans and experiments that’ll eventually make their way into his client work.) Matt’s expertise runs the gamut from AI and product design to business management, financial modeling and organizational design. Most recently, he has helped our clients begin to radically reinvent themselves and reach new audiences through AI that delivers “just in time” content, revamped loyalty programs and game-changing AR experiences.
Katie Ogarek
Financial Officer
Katie has worked across our entire finance discipline for more than 20 years and now leads a department dedicated to delivering our clients’ needs while driving the agency’s financial strategy and operations. The keys to Katie’s success and longevity: understanding every aspect of our business and considering her fellow Burnetters as family. Throughout Katie’s career, she has helped strengthen financial and internal controls; navigated the demands of complex, often highly regulated categories; led client and new-business finance teams; and helped manage various acquisitions and integrations. Prior to leading Leo Burnett’s finance department, Katie oversaw finance for Arc, the Leo Burnett Group agency specializing in commerce and shopper marketing.
Chaka Sobhani
Global Chief Creative Officer
Chaka is hot off five years serving as our chief creative officer at Leo Burnett London, where, among other accomplishments, she oversaw the evolution of the McDonald’s platform in the UK. In a career that’s defied convention, she’s also worked for some of the biggest broadcasters and brands worldwide. In fact, before joining the ad industry, Chaka set up ITV’s first in-house creative agency, during which time the network created its most successful global formats and content in The X Factor and Downton Abbey and won numerous BAFTAs and the Rose D’Or. Chaka then spent several years at independent agency Mother and has worked on such brands as Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Samsung, Stella Artois and Adidas. She has been featured in Campaign’s Top 10 Creative Leaders and sits on the board of the ANDYs, British Arrows, Creative Circle and Facebook Creative Council.
Emily Doskow
Chief Marketing Officer
Win or lose, Emily is that rare agency person whose first question after a grueling, months-long pitch is: “What’s next?” She has had a lot of what’s nexts in her career. Charged with leading our new-business and growth efforts, Emily has architected teams and processes that have led to wins ranging from Beam Suntory and Bridgestone to Slack and Starbucks. She also led what was Coca-Cola’s largest integrated campaign to date, which played a key role in the brand being named Ad Age’s “Marketer of the Year.” Whether she’s pitching a new client or helping build and market new capabilities, Emily brings to her work a growth mentality, the right amount of competitiveness and a whole lot of humanity. Emily also dedicates her time to female mentorship and is engaged in the broader new business community through organizations such as She Runs It and the Chicago Advertising Federation.
Aki Spicer
Chief Strategy Officer
Aki lives and works at the nexus of consumer culture and connected technologies. A Cannes, Effie and Google Creative Canvas winner, not to mention a one-time Campaign magazine “40 under 40,” Aki applies a data-centric and radically collaborative approach. As our chief strategy officer, he employs our HumanKind operating system to bridge the gaps between timeless branding and timely behaviors and to develop creative solutions and experience plans through the lens of human needs. In doing so, he has helped grow and transform such clients as Samsung, Facebook Messenger, Kellogg’s, Adidas and Nissan, to name just a few. And in this time of racial reckoning with America’s increasingly diverse mass, Aki has been leading the charge of forging Multicultural Intelligence, our end-to-end strategic process enabling us and our brands to meet multicultural consumers with more insight, understanding and creative relevance.
Billie Smith
Chief Talent Officer
Billie is hardly a rule follower, but she does live by a few simple rules at work and in life: Treat people fairly and with respect. Give them opportunities. And always support them, especially when they try something new and fail. As our chief talent officer and, before that, our director of talent management, Billie has helped hundreds, if not thousands, of Burnetters grow, serving as their facilitator and their champion. “I didn’t sit back and wait for my career to happen, and that’s what I encourage in others,” she says. Billie also helps lead our ongoing efforts to hold ourselves accountable as an agency in which inclusion and representation are fundamental to our culture, our product and how we behave in the world. “For me,” she says, “DE&I work is fundamentally internal change. My goal is to give people the tools, the space and the support to confidently embark on this journey together.”
Make something great with us.
Interested in helping our team develop creative solutions that earn distinction, grow our clients’ businesses and help people? Then check out our open career opportunities.
Waiting for the perfect role but not ready to apply just yet? Keep in touch by joining our talent community.