People on the Move

Creative content company Alkemy X has added Katharine Starsinic as director of client services & operations, and Jay Halbert as SVP of finance to its management team. Starsinic is tasked with increasing the company’s visibility and working with brand and advertiser clients while Halbert will lead all aspects of its financial functions.
 
Starsinic was most recently with Comcast, where she served as director of marketing & communications, dedicating five years to building the B2B brand and developing the marketing programs for Comcast Business. She was involved in planning and executing a full range of marketing efforts, including new product launches, sponsorships and demand generation campaigns.
 
Prior to Comcast, Starsinic spent 10 years as an account director at Wunderman Advertising in New York City. There, she led integrated and direct teams for the agency’s marquee clients, such as Citi, AT&T, Microsoft, HP and Pfizer.  
 
Halbert was most recently SVP of a manufacturing company, and prior to that was president/owner of a laser rental and sales company, both based in the Philadelphia region. Before that, he spent nearly a decade as chief financial officer for a series of companies in the sports, media and entertainment business, including Comcast Spectacor, which owned the Philadelphia Flyers, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Wells Fargo Center, and six other complementary businesses. 
 
After earning his accounting degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his law degree from New York University School of Law, Halbert practiced in the corporate law department at the New York-based international law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell before leaving for the business world. He then went to work with PricewaterhouseCoopers Securities as an associate investment banker, before taking a position as CFO and principal of New Spring Capital, a venture capital fund based in the Mid-Atlantic Region.

Matthieu de Lesseux has been appointed to the newly created role of CEO of Creative Activities for Havas Paris, Les Gaulois, Fullsix France and Havas Digital Factory. Scheduled to come aboard at the beginning of September, he will help accelerate the digital transformation of Havas Group’s clients in France and serve as a member of Havas Village France’s executive committee, chaired by Raphaël de Andreis. 

After having been a successful digital entrepreneur and founding digital agency Duke, de Lesseux became president of Razorfish France. He then joined the Omnicom Group as co-president of DDB Paris and DDB France Group where he led digital transformation and won leading brands including McDonald’s and Volkswagen.

“I have closely followed Matthieu’s impressive career for years,” said de Andreis. “He is one of the pioneers of digital transformation in France. He is pragmatic and always one step ahead. He was the first to understand that mobile created a connection with consumers that goes beyond communication and actually drives sales. Matthieu is also a great manager who is passionate about what he does and who values creative ideas above everything else.”

“I am proud, excited yet humbled to be joining the Havas Village France,” said de Lesseux. “The excellence of its agencies and teams, the merging of creative and media, the agility necessary to transform our clients’ business, the integration of technology and data and the joining of Havas and Vivendi are just some of the assets that mean we have the best offering on the market.”

Zoic Studios has promoted John Kilshaw to creative director. Kilshaw joined Zoic’s New York studio in 2016 as VFX supervisor and has rapidly shifted to lead the creative direction of projects out of the East Coast office, spanning television, feature film and commercial work. Kilshaw has nearly 15 years of experience in visual effects. He has been instrumental in the growth of the NYC office, growing the studio’s staff to accommodate the influx of large scale projects in the local market.

Kilshaw has worked at top award-winning VFX shops including ILM, Method and Double Negative. He has lent his talents to such major feature films as The Avengers, Battleship , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Rango, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 10,000 BC, Cloverfield, The Dark Knight and The Chronicles of Riddick. Most recently, Kilshaw served as VFX supervisor on the Netflix superhero crossover series Marvel’s The Defenders, which was released on August 18. He also recently worked on Darren Aronofsky’s thriller Mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer and Domhnall Gleeson, which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival and will be released in theaters on September 15.

“John has been integral in the success of our New York office.  He’s assembled a great team and strikes that careful balance of top notch creative and strong business acumen,” noted Zoic executive creative director/co-founder Chris Jones.  
“It’s really a golden age for television right now, and it is exciting to discover more spectacular ways to tell stories and capture audience’s imagination,” added Kilshaw.

Kilshaw studied fine art painting at the Gamble Institute and majored in design and photography at Staffordshire Polytechnic, working as a photographer and stylist for a short time before moving into finance. He moved on to the brand consultancy firm Wolff Olins, which led him to the film and advertising space. Kilshaw brings his experience fostering relationships in the finance world to the collaborative spirit of the entertainment industry. He has held numerous 3D, visual effects, digital effects and computer graphics roles over the years.

Advertainment studio BARK BARK, with offices in Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles, is expanding its marketing content support of film, TV and streaming productions shooting in Georgia. Central to this expansion is the addition of Betsy Powell, BARK BARK’s new VP of client partnerships, theatrical.

Powell who brings extensive experience in theatrical marketing to BARK BARK in Atlanta, noted, “According to FilmLA, Georgia was home to more of the top 100 grossing films of 2016 than any other location. With 320 film and TV productions, generating  $9.5 billion in economic impact just this past year, I’m excited to be a part of what happens next in Georgia. “

BARK BARK has been successfully delivering theatrical marketing and branded content across every platform from Snapchat to broadcast for over 10 years, and is increasing its Atlanta capabilities, further enhanced by Georgia’s vibrant production industry and the state’s new postproduction tax credits. 

“With the boost from Georgia Film and TV tax credits, we are proud to be hiring more people and expanding our space in Atlanta to share our theatrical marketing content expertise with the growing community here,” explained SVP of client partnership, Karen Grant.

Following time in NYC working for the likes of HBO and Lifetime, Powell spent most of her career in Los Angeles, working for creative agencies, broadcast networks, movie trailer and feature film marketing companies on projects for every genre and scope. Among them, Aspect Ratio, New Wave Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Buena Vista Pictures Marketing, and Warner Bros in-house theatrical agency. Prior to joining BARK BARK, Powell was CD of On Air and Short Form launching Jennifer Lopez’s English-speaking Latino network to the highest ratings in their history with a bicoastal campaign led by J Lo herself as chief creative officer.

BARK BARK has been crafting award-winning marketing content on every platform via its trio of offices in the country’s leading entertainment cities. Branded content, movie trailers, TV campaigns, Snapchat, teasers, BTS, VR-360, brand connections, and marketing content of every shape and size comprise BARK BARK’s support for the film, TV and advertising industry worldwide. BARK BARK also maintains exclusive relationships with such producers as Jennifer Lopez’ Nuyorican Productions, Sean Hayes’ Hazy Mills and ITV, the largest independent non-fiction series creator in America. At BARK BARK, Powell will work hand in hand with the management team including Karen Grant and Brian Tolleson in the company’s expansion. 

Tolleson, president of the company, said, “I’m consistently impressed with Georgia. The State is wisely supporting the entertainment industry, consistently maintaining a small-business friendly economy, and keeping non-discrimination as a core value. Investing more here was kind of a no-brainer.”