In the latest of our ongoing series highlighting remarkable women in advertising, we sat down with Carrie Philpott, Chief Client Officer at Wunderman Thompson North America and President at WT Atlanta, and chatted about growth, representation and the responsibility of a leader to mentor and connect.
Can you tell us a bit about your role and your journey to arriving there?
Currently, I have 2 roles at Wunderman Thompson: President of our Atlanta office and Chief Client Officer for North America. I have grown up in agencies – working most of my career in 3 places: Digitas, Huge, and now Wunderman Thompson. My career has been built on client partnership, and I have led many client engagements across all types of work, industries, and geographies. I was fortunate to have a great opportunity years ago to manage an office and P&L. It wasn’t necessarily an ambition of mine, but I quickly found I love managing an overall business and having the freedom and empowerment to make decisions on behalf of our clients and team to enable growth. So, my current two roles give me the opportunity to do what I believe I do best and enjoy the most in this business.
What barriers do women still face in our industry and how can we challenge them?
I do think we’ve come a long way. When I joined Wunderman Thompson as President in Atlanta over 3 years ago, I was the first woman in that role within an office that had been in existence for many years. We now have female office presidents over four of our eight offices. That experience wasn’t lost on me, as I felt then - and continue to feel - an expectation to ensure the women around me are represented and heard. As female leaders, I believe mentoring and connecting with women in our industry and on our teams is crucial – it’s those connections that made and continue to make an enormous impact on me and the trajectory of my career.
While our office currently is well balanced in numbers with women, we continue to focus on how to ensure women get the coaching, mentoring, and professional development needed to grow. As an industry, we still lack female representation in key capabilities – creative and technology in particular. Leaning into our recruiting and retention strategies is critical, and as leaders, we need to be outspoken and clear on expectations around both.
How do you use your position to build equitable teams that are diverse and balanced?
I believe being intentional and transparent is critical in any leadership role. We actively look for diversity when hiring – across gender, race, age, etc. We ensure our candidate slate is representative of our market. We ensure our interview team is diverse. We ask hard questions of ourselves, especially when someone’s experience looks different. We question biases. Our dialogue is open and sometimes uncomfortable to get there. But, we also work to find common ground when teams are built – celebrating successes together and collaborating on work as tight teams. This connection is critical to creating teams that are trusting and high performing.
Who are your female advertising icons/role models and why?
I have been fortunate to have many mentors in my career, several of whom helped me build my own confidence and set the boundaries I needed to be the best version of my whole self – of which my career is one element. Currently, I am surrounded by strong female leaders including our global CEO, Mel Edwards, and our CEO of North America, Audrey Melofchik. I respect them both, and they inspire me to lean into all of the conversations and have a point of view and a bias for action. They lead by example and provide great role models.
Additionally, Kristen Cavallo, the CEO of The Martin Agency and MullenLowe Global, has been impactful to me directly and indirectly with her approach to leadership in this industry. Her impact on changing the culture and focus of The Martin Agency is incredible. And, her journey to becoming a CEO is surprising and unexpected. She’s brave and fearless. She has a voice and uses it regularly – both to praise great work and partnerships and to call out wrongs. She’s also open, honest, direct, and accessible in an incredibly refreshing way. I’ve been fortunate to get to know her and lean on her for advice, and she’s inspired me to be a strong female leader in our industry.