Meet our 2022 Queensland Assisters. A host of Marketing, Strategy, Advertising, Media, Creative, Design, Tech, and Production powerhouses. Youâll see some familiar faces as well as a few extraordinary new recruits.
Without further ado, weâre excited to share this yearâs lineup with you. No matter what your career interest, thereâs a talented and experienced Assister here for you.
Simone Waugh
Managing Director, PublicisWW
Simone is the Managing Director of Publicis, a full service agency with the mission to Lead the Change for brands with digital, creative and media solutions. She recently led the communications for the winning Olympics Brisbane 2032 bid and is building tourism, sport and experiential engagement experiences in preparation for the event.
Simone has worked for large corporates, has extensive experience with government, and has a passion to give back to charities. Category experience includes financial services, healthcare, education, food service, and FMCG. A leader of inclusivity and diversity initiatives and a focus on wellbeing in the workplace.
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Vicki Lee
Head of Broadcast & Content, PublicisWW
Vicki Lee is a BADC hall-of-famer for a reason: sheâs one of Queenslandâs most experienced producers, having spent years in agencies, production companies and post-production in Australia and the UK. Basically, what Vicki doesnât know about production isnât worth knowing.
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Christine Gannon
Managing Partner, CHEP
Christine is the Managing Partner of CHEP in Brisbane, one of Australiaâs most successful and awarded creative, cx, data and tech agencies. Brisbane born and bred, she has worked in the industry for over 25 years across a range of agencies and clients including RACQ, TAFE Qld, Michael Hill Jeweller, UQ, TEQ and more. She is a hands-on strategic leader who brings enthusiasm and a problem solving attitude to everything she does.
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Nicole Hartley
MBA Director and Senior Lecturer/Researcher, UQ
Nicole Hartley is a service technology and digital media researcher and associate professor with the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland. She is also Director of the UQ Business School MBA program. Nicole is passionate about understanding decision making in consumer contexts, particularly how it relates to new technology and digital services and messaging. Nicole has taught and worked extensively in advertising and marketing in both Australia and in London.
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Georgia Ball
General Manager, VIVO Group
Georgia is General Manager at Vivo, a local digital agency that builds custom digital products for clients like National Storage, Diabetes Australia, UQ, QUT, Poolwerx, Jetts Gyms and Spicers Retreats. She started her career in digital at a London based tech incubator and since then she's worked both agency side and within startups designing and implementing growth strategies. Georgia was also the first Brisbane Chapter Director for Interactive Minds.
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Jessamy Ross
Senior Copywriter at Khemistry & QLD AWARD SCHOOL Head
Jessamy is a senior copywriter at Khemistry. Over the past 10 years, she's earned her creative stripes working on campaigns big and small for some of Australia's most interesting clients (and others she's had to work to make interesting along the way).
As a past Award School winner (2014) big, bold ideas get her out of bed in the morning. But, as a Masters-degree-qualified nerd, she also thrives on finding her way out of a strategic quagmire or behaviour change puzzle. Outside of advertising, her writing has been published in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Wellbeing Magazine.
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Priscilla Jeha
Founder at The Together Society
Priscilla has over 20 years experience in the advertising industry with a large chunk of that spent in London leading integrated, multi-disciplined, global teams. She is the creator of âMaestroâ, a growth driven, Project Management methodology; has her pilotâs license, loves property development and is a Mumma of twins. The greatest motivators in her career are building exceptional client partner experiences with a focus on trust and authentic collaboration; and fostering innovation in a dynamic culture. Cil remains close with all of her previous Assisterhood mentees (proudly attending the wedding of her very first Mentee this March!) and is a huge fan of applicants with solutions focused, growth mindsets!
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Caroline Starecky
Practice lead, Innovation & Experience design at GLASS Consultancy
As Practice Lead in Innovation & Experience Design at GLASS, a unique innovation management consultancy, Caroline develops innovative initiatives leveraging the human-centred design lens across BX/EX/CX/UX and technology, processes, data for large-scale organisations across Australia. Caroline also spent over 15 years in integrated agencies cultivating brands and developing impactful outcome-focused strategies in North America and Australia.
Caroline has spearheaded numerous behaviour change campaigns in the healthcare industry, education, utilities, FMCG, QSR, insurance and womenâs leadership initiatives. She holds a Masterâs degree in International Marketing having completed her thesis in Chile and a Business Coaching certification from the Neuroleadership Institute of Sydney.
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Kelly Brightwell
Strategy Director, Khemistry
Kelly is a brand strategist with more than 15 years of industry experience developing robust, insights driven brand and marketing strategies for brands including Suncorp, Virgin Australia, Natureâs Own and Lorna Jane. Recently, she made the leap from client to agency side joining the incredible team at Khemistry as their Strategy Director.
As your mentor, Kelly will encourage you to push past your comfort zone, understand what motivates you, play to your strengths and foster powerful relationships.
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Erin Core
Head of Research and Strategy at Veracity
Erin Core is the Head of Research and Strategy at Veracity, a business that she launched in 2021 aimed at disrupting the traditional model by making research and strategy simpler and easier to manage, share and understand. Erin has over 16 years of experience in advertising campaigns, insights, research, creative strategy, messaging, customer journey mapping, workshop facilitation, brand positioning, and brand platform development. Her recent roles have included Head of Marketing at Queensland Ballet, Strategy Director at Clemenger BBDO, and strategist at Y&R (now VMLY&R). If you become her mentee, youâll learn that Erin is very particular about insights, will definitely run you through her âlife strategy workshopâ, and she wonât be able to help talking about CrossFit.
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Kylee Ratz
Group General Manager, Cutting Edge
Kylee Ratz' career spans more than 28 years and includes an impressive 14 years as Cutting Edge's Group General Manager in which she leads a team of over 100 people. Kylee thrives on rapport building and delivering high-quality products that not only meet but exceed client expectations. Her passion for the industry, aptitude for client service and high-quality output has cultivated a highly-regarded reputation and she looks forward to sharing her knowledge with the Assisterhood for the fourth year in a row!
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Keisha Leon
Director at Leon Design
Keisha is an Aboriginal Graphic Artist and Director and owner of Leon Design - a creative consultancy specialising in conceptual design to bring ideas to life. As a proud Waanyi & Kalkadoon woman, she is passionate about supporting Indigenous initiatives and projects through creative storytelling.
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Ash Ivory
Head of Product at Askable
Ash Ivory is the Head of Product at Askable. Most days you will find Ash asking the hard questions in an easy way, splitting hairs over good user experience (donât worry, they studied graphic design), dodging gender norms (theyâre openly queer), helping their product team to find and solve the right problems (Ash is passionate about building a great product with real purpose), upskilling the office in brewing coffee (coffee, err, that's all). Oh, and riding their motorcycle (it's basically meditation).
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Ashton Tuckerman
Chief Marketing Officer at Gathar
Ashton has a passion for growing brands through creative storytelling. Before joining Queensland-grown startup Gathar as their first CMO, Ashton worked both in-house and agency-side for global game changers (Flight Centre), industry disrupters (Youfoodz), and award-winning agencies (Red Havas), and has been known to side-gig as a travel writer and restaurant reviewer. More than anything, Ashton loves helping people find their âwhyâ, making the work week feel less like a bunch of Mondays strung together.
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Kylie McLeod
Marketing Manager, Commercial Acquisition
Kylie is a highly experienced International Marketing Manager with a demonstrated history of working in destination marketing and higher education. Digital Strategy, Event Management, Account Management, Marketing Strategy, and Content Marketing are second nature to her. Kylie studied and worked in the international marketing environment in her youth to help satisfy her love of travel but is now focussing on giving back and making the world a better place.
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Frankie Young
Founder & Creative Director, Studio Neubau
Frankie is a strategic brand designer with a passion for brand design and helping female-led businesses launch and thrive, which she cultivated and channeled into growing her design practice from a freelance side hustle to the full time one-woman design business Studio Neubau, where she works closely with business owners to create visual identities, bespoke publications and packaging to custom websites.
Passionate about giving back to Brisbaneâs design industry and nurturing the next generation of designers Frankie lectures at Shillington College. As a host of Ladies Wine Designâs Brisbane chapter Frankie aims to foster Brisbaneâs creative community and foster strong connection that enable the next generation of empowered female leaders.
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Emmagness Ruzvidzo
Head of Brand & Marketing, Global Payments Inc.
Emmagness designs and executes data-driven marketing strategies to meet customer needs while maximising revenue. She is passionate about helping companies build high-performance marketing teams, increase competitiveness and growth through actionable insights, market trend analysis, and assessment of emerging technologies' impact on company operations.
Emmagness's strong analytical abilities are paired with strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills.
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Katie Martel
Owner and Director, Croft Public Relations
Katie is founder and director of Croft PR, Brisbaneâs leading PR and marketing agency for creating âPR with Purposeâ. She's a 15-year award-winning brand and PR consultant and strategist who was named as Inside Small Business 'Top 50 Australian Small Business Leaders.'
Katie founded Croft PR in 2013, and today she leads a creative, savvy and collaborative communications team working with some of Australiaâs leading brands â including Shine Lawyers, Craftâd Grounds and Medela Australia.
Her mission is to help other leaders - in business, charities and government organisations - drive PR with purpose - meaning there is a greater, positive purpose and impact to championing their mission, than just driving bottom-line results. She is also podcast host to the Thriving in Business podcast.
As a mum of two young boys, she's committed to empowering more women and mums in the industry - providing greater opportunities for growth and leadership.
Camille Layt
Senior Advisor - Content, Rio Tinto
Camille's a passionate word nerd and living proof that a content skillset can open doors in any industry. Her career has so far spanned writing, editing, and managerial roles in publishing, e-learning, construction, engineering, retail, university marketing, and her current role as a Senior Content Advisor for global mining giant Rio Tinto.
Camille published her first book in 2021, and also has a thriving portfolio career, with diverse freelance gigs as a content strategist, feature writer, manuscript editor, website developer, music teacher, and professional bagpiper.
Neha Sen
Chief Marketing and Experience Officer, Acumentis Group
There is one simple mantra Neha lives by: âLifeâs too short to live boring, do boring or eat boring.â
Her working marketing career reflects the same which has spanned across multinational environments to taking her own FMCG brand from the R & D bench to over 300 stores across Australia in under 10 months while winning over 25 industry awards.
Life is everything but dull in the world of Neha where she is passionate about taking a brand from zero to hero through a strategic, alternative, customised marketing approach powered by digital media but never underestimates the power of good old traditional relationship-based marketing. Be it e-business, brand creation, B2B, or tapping into the power of digital â Neha is energised by the intricacies and power of marketing especially when work is fueled by great food â yup she is a die-hard foodie!
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Eva Rothwell
Global Head of Marketing, intelliHR
A seasoned growth marketer, Eva is a senior marketing leader, an innate storyteller, and obsessed with illustrating the 'why'.
With a wealth of diverse experience spanning financial services, the arts and most recently the tech and SaaS sectors, Eva has a proven track record of leading high-performing teams and driving powerful results for established and emerging brands.
Equally passionate about the work and the people, nothing gets her more excited than seeing diverse teams come together to achieve big things.
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Jen Jeavons
Founder & Managing Director, Pixel Palace
Jen is a creative, agency founder, entrepreneur, and award-winning singer/songwriter â sheâs literally spent a lifetime commercialising her creativity and communication skills. Having travelled the world as a backing singer for Savage Garden in 1997, Jen secured her own recording & publishing deal and in 2001 released the hit single âPleased to Meet Youâ which became the most played Australian song on commercial radio for that year. Long story short - at 30 she was forced to reinvent herself, studied web development and refocused her creativity to launch her digital & marketing agency - Pixel Palace - in 2009.
As a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Jen has found that being empathetic, intuitive, and emotionally intelligent has in fact become her âsuper power.â with both her team and their clients. Jen and her heavily female team are on a mission to make Pixel Palace Australiaâs most human-focused agency, known equally for our award-winning work and the positive impact they create for their people, clients and communities.
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Amber Snow
General Manager, Pixel Palace
As Pixel Palaceâs General Manager, Amber is the ultimate âintrapreneurâ with a focus on creating positive change in people's lives through business. As a young emerging leader who achieved GM status at 30, she has accelerated her career by focusing on leading from within, something she teaches the practice of daily with her team of marketers, creatives and developers at the reputable Pixel Palace. Amber's mission both inside and outside the work environment is to spark confidence in people and their abilities so that they can achieve their potential and live more fulfilled lives.
With a Bachelorâs Degree in Business (Mktg), Amber has applied her intrapreneurial business skills to coach people, transform businesses and enjoy a decade-long career that spans from radio, to corporate branding and agency management.
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Sara Tweedly
Chief Marketing Officer, Canstar
Sara has almost 20 years of experience in the finance, marketing, digital, and communications industries with practical and demonstrated success across paid, earned, and owned media locally and internationally.
In her role as Chief Marketing Officer at Canstar, Sara is responsible for developing and leading the implementation of Canstarâs marketing strategy to drive traffic and brand awareness, improve customer experiences and generate revenue streams. Sara leads one of the largest and fastest-growing teams at Canstar spanning marketing, PR, SEO, and editorial.
Having spent the majority of her career working in financial services across a range of very different organisations, Sara empowers her team to make the complex simple and is passionate about delivering on the brandâs goal of helping consumers to get financially healthy.
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Amanda Goddard
Senior Creative Marketing, Publicity & Social Media Manager, m4m agency
As a Senior Publicist and Social Media Manager at M4M, Amanda manages the Roadshow Films account, amongst others, overseeing the marketing, publicity, events and talent tours in Queensland and Northern Territory. Working on this account for the past 9+ years Amanda has been able to secure & work with metro, regional & national publications, journalists & brands providing Roadshow Entertainment coverage & collaborations across major print & digital outlets & brand.
Amanda is highly skilled in communications, content strategy, social media integration, & influencer marketing. Working across all sectors of industry, Amanda has the ability to create, implement and execute social and digital strategies across a range of clients including Origin Energy, Independent Schools Queensland, Channel 9, Market Central Lutwyche just to name a few. Amanda oversees & works closely with all members of the M4M team to ensure all digital/social campaigns are executed & strategised with the latest digital opportunities and looks for any educational opportunities that arise to keep up to date with the ever changing digital world.
Nina Ellingsen
Senior Marketing Manager, Orange Sky Australia
Nina is an experienced strategic marketing and communications professional with a passion for developing and executing creative campaigns to drive strategic objectives. Her career spans over 16 years working within integrated marketing agencies, including founding and managing her own marketing consultancy in 2011 which she then went on to merge with one of Queenslandâs largest independently owns agencies in 2017.
Her skills span strategic marketing, campaign strategy and execution, corporate communications, media relations and stakeholder and community engagement. Currently, Nina heads up a small team of marketing and communications specialists at Orange Sky, a not-for-profit that supports people experiencing homelessness with free laundry, warm showers and genuine non-judgemental conversation. Nina leads the team to deliver on fundraising and partnership campaigns and drive brand awareness across Australia and New Zealand.
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Lisa Summer-Hayes
Head of Marketing and Audience Development, Queensland Ballet
Lisa is a lively marketing leader who enjoys the immersive nature of client-side roles. Her extensive experience leading teams in the education and not-for-profit space, in Australia and the UK, has given Lisa a strong sense of purpose.
Her strength is navigating complex organisations, using insights and intuition to achieve growth whilst building up internal marketing capability.
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Ready to be a part of Assisterhood as a Mentee?
We are now up and running in QLD and VIC – and we’re only just getting started! Let’s shoot for the stars – together!