The One Club for Creativity--a nonprofit organization supporting the global creative community, and producer of The One Show, ADC Annual Awards and Creative Week--has named Bob Isherwood to serve as director of professional development,

A creative legend, Isherwood in his new role will bolster existing club programs such as Creative Leaders Retreats and Executive Creative Summits, and develop a range of new global initiatives focused on professional development for creatives at all levels.  

Isherwood’s creative career spans more than three decades including 22 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he served 11 years as the agency’s worldwide creative director and as chair of its worldwide creative board.  Under his leadership, the network was consistently ranked one of the most creative in the world, winning more than 8,000 major awards for clients such as P&G and Toyota, for whom Isherwood served as creative director for the global launch of Toyota Prius.

He is an inductee in the Clio Hall of Fame, recipient of the Clio Lifetime Achievement Award and British Design and Art Directors Gold Award for Advertising, and for many years ran Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase at Cannes.  Since leaving the agency world, he taught advertising at Vanderbilt University and cofounded Dialog Health, a mobile messaging company created to improve patient satisfaction, compliance and adherence in healthcare.

“Bob’s vision, leadership and pursuit of creative excellence has been an inspiration to thousands of our people around the world,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO, The One Club.  “We’re thrilled and lucky to have him as a member of the team, where he will raise our professional development programming to the next level.”

“Education has been my focus for quite a while now,” said Isherwood, who served as an adjunct professor for six years at Vanderbilt University where developed his own course on “Creative Advertising.”  “For the past few years, I’ve had ongoing discussions with Kevin and Tony (Gulisano, global chief growth officer) about where the current education system falls short for our industry.  That led me to joining the club because we are like minded on the gaps we can fill.” 

Working closely with Gulisano, Isherwood has put into motion his first initiative which has been to develop a series of “Creative Perspectives” streaming sessions from top creative thinkers from around the world.  The sessions make up nearly a third of the club’s Creative Month 2020 online programming, running free of charge May 4-29.