Jacki Kelley, CEO of dentsu Americas, has been named chair of the Ad Council’s board of directors. She succeeds Linda Yaccarino, chairman, global advertising and partnerships of NBCUniversal, and will serve in the role until June 30, 2023.
Tara Walpert Levy, VP, Americas at YouTube, has also been elected to vice chair of the Ad Council’s board of directors alongside Diego Scotti, current vice chair, who will serve as chair after Kelley.
For more than 80 years, the Ad Council has been at the forefront of driving the communications industry’s social impact efforts. Its board of directors is comprised of senior marketing and media executives who provide expertise, insights and financial support to ensure the Ad Council’s social impact communication campaigns are effective and impactful. Most recently, the Ad Council and its board of directors led the industry’s response to COVID-19 and the launch of the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative.
As chair, Kelley will work in collaboration with the executive committee, the governing body of the Ad Council’s board, and Ad Council leadership to further the organization’s mission to use the power of communications to address the country’s critical social issues. Additionally, Kelley will chair the Ad Council’s 2022 Annual Public Service Award Dinner, the organization’s largest annual fundraising event.
“Jacki’s commitment to driving social impact through smart and strategic marketing has been invaluable to the Ad Council’s campaigns and reinforced Jacki’s reputation as one of the most influential and altruistic leaders within our industry,” said Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of the Ad Council. “With Jacki’s guidance, we will continue to convene powerful coalitions and implement cutting edge strategies that will move the needle on America’s most pressing issues.”
Kelley joined the Ad Council board of directors in 2017 and became a member of the executive committee in 2018. Prior to her appointment as board Chair, Kelley served as vice chair. Under Kelley’s leadership, dentsu Americas made a commitment from the top to develop a comprehensive blueprint for the Ad Council’s COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative, aligning leadership across the organization–Carat, Merkle, Posterscope, Mitchell, Amplifi. The effort was serviced via the dentsu health teaming platform, informing everything that went into the Ad Council’s largest effort in its 80-year history.
“I could not be more proud to serve as the chair, working alongside the amazing Lisa Sherman. I am grateful for the leadership of my friend Linda Yaccarino who led an unprecedented effort for vaccination education in one of the most important moments in our history,” said Kelley. “The Ad Council is a place where our collective power to create change comes together for the good of society. It is an honor to work with my colleagues to demonstrate the power of our craft.”
Kelley has been a recognized and lauded leader in the advertising and media industries for over 25 years. She joined dentsu in 2019 as president, chief client officer, dentsu US, and was named dentsu Americas CEO in January 2020. During her time at dentsu, Kelley has led the region through a restructure going from 35+ brands to six leadership brands, championed and developed an industry leading DEI strategy favoring progress over activity and created a culture of transparency and inclusivity.
In addition to her role at dentsu Americas, Kelley serves on the boards of FreshPet and Comic Relief USA and has been honored with the United Way of New York City’s Power of Women to Make a Difference Award. She was named a Matrix Award Honoree by New York Women in Communications; Advertising Woman of the Year by the Advertising Women of New York; a New York Women in Film & Television Muse Award Honoree; and was inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement.
With the election of Kelley, the Ad Council will continue its ongoing tradition of rotating board chairs between the organizations’ four sectors: media companies, technology platforms, agencies and advertisers.
Review: Director John Crowley’s “We Live In Time”
It's not hard to spend a few hours watching Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield fall and be in love. In "We Live In Time," filmmaker John Crowley puts the audience up close and personal with this photogenic British couple through the highs and lows of a relationships in their 30s.
Everyone starts to think about the idea of time, and not having enough of it to do everything they want, at some point. But it seems to hit a lot of us very acutely in that tricky, lovely third decade. There's that cruel biological clock, of course, but also careers and homes and families getting older. Throw a cancer diagnosis in there and that timer gets ever more aggressive.
While we, and Tobias (Garfield) and Almut (Pugh), do indeed live in time, as we're constantly reminded in big and small ways — clocks and stopwatches are ever-present, literally and metaphorically — the movie hovers above it. The storytelling jumps back and forth through time like a scattershot memory as we piece together these lives that intersect in an elaborate, mystical and darkly comedic way: Almut runs into Tobias with her car. Their first chat is in a hospital hallway, with those glaring fluorescent lights and him bruised and cut all over. But he's so struck by this beautiful woman in front of him, he barely seems to care.
I suppose this could be considered a Lubitschian "meet-cute" even if it knowingly pushes the boundaries of our understanding of that romance trope. Before the hit, Tobias was in a hotel, attempting to sign divorce papers and his pens were out of ink and pencils kept breaking. In a fit of near-mania he leaves, wearing only his bathrobe, to go to a corner store and buy more. Walking back, he drops something in the street and bang: A new relationship is born. It's the... Read More