Nur El Shami has been named chief operating officer of Grey New York, a newly created role at the agency. El Shami is the latest C-suite appointment made by Grey NY CEO Amber Guild, who assumed her role in December 2021. Most recently, El Shami was COO at WaitWhat, an award-winning media invention company that builds premium IP.

El Shami and Guild now reunite at Grey. The two worked together previously at The New York Times, leading transformation of the digital branded content division, T Brand Studios, along with the business transformation of the global advertising division

Long before entering the creative and media business, El Shami began her career in the fashion industry, holding various positions in marketing and production at labels in Milan, Paris, and London before founding her own boutique fine-art platform in London with a mission to support and promote emerging artists via alternative patronage models. 

She later moved to New York to begin consulting for brands in the arts and luxury industry and producing cultural events.

In her newly appointed role, El Shami will focus on building a strong yet nimble operational foundation that will enable people at Grey to do their best work, and creates space for the kind of diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture needed to fuel innovation. 

El Shami is known for a people-centric approach to operations, with a proven track record of navigating complex, highly matrixed structures across a variety of industries. Her diverse and entrepreneurial career background enables her to quickly identify organizational patterns, develop change-management roadmaps, and execute on them–all with a success-based approach built on empathy and creativity. She’s a tireless advocate for people, always seeking out opportunities to partner with colleagues to help boost the quality, efficiency, and rewarding nature of their work.

El Shami’s interest in empowering talent to achieve their fullest potential is something that, since 2020, she also pursued as the Chair of the Board of Scholarship Plus, a nonprofit organization supporting extraordinary first-generation college students from low income families receive higher education, fully paid and debt free.

Guild said, “I came to Grey New York because of its extraordinary legacy of constant reinvention, spanning 105 years. And with Nur El Shami, I have a partner who is experienced in driving transformation and can help enact the next phase of change for this studio by accelerating our ability to create a workplace culture where all people can do their best work and where we deliver smarter, faster and more creatively for our clients.”