Meet our 2023 VIC Assisters. With VIC now in its second year, you might see some familiar faces, as well as a few extraordinary new recruits.
We’re so proud of this lineup of powerhouses from all different disciplines.
And remember – your mentor doesn’t have to work in your desired role. Some of our most successful pairings have come from vibes and values.
Naomi Mulholland
Independent Producer, Cloudberry Films
Naomi Mulholland is an independent producer, with a long track record of line producing Australian drama. She is currently line producing the Disney Plus period drama “The Artful Dodger” in Sydney and recently produced the Screen Australia funded web series Sonia & Cherry and co produced feature film, Run Rabbit Run.
Other credits include the Apple TV series Shantaram, the Netflix drama Clickbait, Ten’s Playing for Keeps, Nine’s Bad Mothers, acclaimed prison drama, Wentworth, Seven Network’s Winners & Losers, ABC’s The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Lowdown and Twentysomething, BAFTA nominated UK-Australian co-production, Mrs Biggs, and Ten's AFI award-winning police drama, Rush.
Naomi also produced the ABC3 young adult sketch comedy series, You’re Skitting Me, and worked on the following feature films: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, Red Hill, The Wedding Party, Rush Hour 3 and Ghost Rider, as well as locally made HBO production, The Pacific.
Maria Voronina
General Manager - Corporate Strategy & Communications, Chobani Australia
Maria Voronina is a commercially savvy business strategist with a strong background in marketing and brand communications.
Her experience to date is broad and stretches across strategy, innovation, brand & experience management, and consumer insights with a strong background in business, economics & research. Her passion lies in crafting effective purpose-led strategies and telling the stories that inspire others to think differently.
Maria is currently heading the corporate strategy development, long-term strategic planning process, and corporate affairs & communications functions at Chobani Australia.
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Nancy Bugeja
Managing Director, HM
Nancy Bugeja is a multidisciplinary strategic designer, brand strategist and marketing professional. Director and co-owner of HM with a passion for design culture.
Nancy believes that bold creative ideas can be universal and have the power to transcend cultures, audiences and technologies. She is globally regarded and awarded for her communication design, brand strategy, intuition, creative idealisation, facilitation and leadership. Nancy is much sought after by bold businesses, industry professionals and students of design.
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Michila Macleod
National Sales and Partnerships Director, Broadsheet Media
Michila is the National Sales and Partnerships Director at Broadsheet Media, Australia’s leading cultural guide. She has spent 20 years building her career across global media corporations and smaller independent publishers and across the Australian and UK markets.
Michila’s advertising experience spans magazines, newspapers, street press, radio, digital and now leads the national sales team in the content partnership space at Broadsheet.
A career highlight for Michila has been the experience she’s gained from working for incredible and inspiring female leaders, that has directly impacted how she leads today.
“My greatest reward as a leader is having a front-row seat at watching the growth and development of your team. I will never get tired of seeing ambition and hard work payoff”
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Ella Keddie
Senior Client Partner - Retail, Financial Services and Government, Snap Inc.
Ella is a Senior Client Partner at Snapchat leading the Government, Retail and Finance verticals. After 4 years at Facebook working across Government and Finance clients, Ella made the move to focus specifically on the most valuable and lucrative digital audiences - Gen Z and Millenials and helping brands reach them via Snapchat.
A passion for helping brands navigate the ever-evolving digital ecosystem and better understand audiences, Ella's enthusiasm to drive real business results and behaviour change in creative and meaningful ways ensures both brands and consumers benefit.
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Dr Marion Piper
Creativity Coach, Marion Piper Creative
If you’re looking for practical creativity for big ideas, then Dr Marion Piper is your go-to gal. As a creativity coach and copywriter, she supports creative entrepreneurs to become their most creative selves so they can communicate their world-changing ideas with confidence and passion.
Marion believes that everyone is creative (yes, even you) and in a world where everyone sounds the same, choosing the right words is the best way to stay out. Having traveled the world, working in creative agencies, summer camps and universities, as well as completing a swag of degrees (including a PhD), Marion is here to inspire you to stop imitating everyone else and start using your own voice FOR REAL.
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Mirella Arapian
Founder & Creative Director, MEK
Mirella Arapian (she/her) is an Armenian-Australian creative director. She’s the founder and creative director at MEK, a purpose-driven design studio building brands of the future with social and environmental impact. Specialising in branding, campaigns and design, MEK disrupts the norm and defies convention to help revolutionary brands tell their story to raise awareness, attention and action, and win hearts and minds. Mirella is also the founder and director of Womentor, a global mentorship program for women in design committed to improving gender equality in the design industry.
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Claire Tenzer
General Manager, TBWA/Melbourne
Claire has worked in the advertising industry for over 18 years working on some of both England and Australia’s most iconic brands telling their stories and returning significant commercial impact.
Currently a General Manager at TBWA\Melbourne, Claire is fiercely passionate and dedicated to the sheer strength of imagination, original ideas and their power to solve big business problems including work in the areas of LGBTIQ+ and women’s financial equality.
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Sheridan Devereux
General Manager, HBK Agency
Sheridan has spent the last 15 years developing and managing integrated communications campaigns for some of Australia’s most loved and respected brands including Target, Specsavers, A2 Milk, Sorbent, Dulux and Cabot’s.
Whilst in her last semester of her Management and Marketing Communications degree at Monash, Sheridan scored a job as an Account Coordinator at HBK. There was no question that she wanted to forge a career in Advertising from that point on.
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Georgia Mappin
General Manager & Executive Producer, Havent You Done Well Productions
Georgia is a Melbourne based, AACTA nominated producer with 13 years experience developing advertising campaigns, original TV & Film content. In 2014 she was the winner of SBS/ Screen NSW “Comedy Runway” and in 2016 developed and produced “Kid vs Kid”, a twenty episode kids comedy series for ABC3. Her series “Seconds”, an original dark comedy, was development funded by Screen Australia and picked up by Beyond International.
Following that her original children’s series ‘Insomniacs’ was development funded by Film Victoria. Since then, she’s developed 3 more comedy series which have all attached series partners and her short film GRACE was nominated for an AACTA award. She can be now found working as an Executive Producer and General Manager for the sketch comedy group ‘Aunty Donna’ and their production company ‘Haven’t You Done Well Productions’. Georgia also oversees their award winning Youtube channel Grouse House, making original content and local acquisitions which has over 54,000 subscribers.
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Ilona Janashvili
Head of strategy, Leo Burnett
Ilona has 20 years’ experience in the industry. She has been with Leo Burnett for over a decade, working at three of the most successful offices in the agency’s global network: Melbourne, Sydney and Toronto.
Ilona started her career client-side with Mattel and then Honda Australia. Prior to her current role as Head of Planning with Leo Burnett in Melbourne, she was a senior planner with BBDO/Clemenger and Head of Strategy at MindShare. Ilona leads works across a diverse portfolio of clients – Honda, HBF, Twinings, Lifeblood, Vitasoy, Spirit of Tasmania and many more, leveraging hard and soft intelligence to create connected business, brand, digital, media and social strategies. Ilona is an advocate for effectiveness awards and is proud of the agency’s record, consistently receiving recognition for a wide variety of work at the most esteemed effectiveness shows: Cannes, Australian Effies, Asia Pac Effies, AME, APMA, WARC Awards and 4A’s Jay Chiat Awards. She has been a regular judge at the AME’s, Australian Effies and the Asia Pac Effies.
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Stefanie DiGianvincenzo
Creative Strategist, Meta
A copywriter by trade, Stefanie has worked across most of Melbourne’s top advertising agencies, including Clemenger BBDO and DDB. Her entrepreneurial spirit has driven her to found businesses, like Melbourne’s first copywriting agency, Apostrophe.
Her love of travel has led her to work abroad – most notably, as Global Creative Lead on Nike Women, out of AKQA London. And her impatience for equality saw her co-found Rare – a side-hustle that grew into Google’s global diversity and inclusion platform. Her work has been recognized at every major international award show. She’s sat on a number of award juries, including D&AD and ADC. and she speaks regularly at global conferences, from Semi Permanent to Cannes.
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Anita Forte
Creative Director, UI, R/GA
Anita is passionate about building memorable and meaningful brand experiences that improve people's lives in any way possible. Nurturing creatives is at the core of empowering the community by giving a voice to every single person involved. Anita is currently the Creative Director of Visual Design at R/GA and works with a range of global brands, including Toyota. With a specialisation in UXUI, Anita works carefully to craft enhanced user experiences based on true empathetic insights and data. Prior to working at R/GA, Anita worked both on agency as well as client side.
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Caitlin Burgess
Chief Financial Officer, CHEP Network
Caitlin is a naturally curious, mindfully creative and commercially focused finance leader. She thrives on using data to solve problems and make impactful business decisions.
She is currently the CFO of CHEP Network, looking after the full suite of capability across the national offices. Her favourite day would include sitting with the team shaping a brief and corresponding narrative, solving a sticky problem and growing commercial acumen across the wider agency. She works with leaders in the business to deliver on their collective strategic outcomes.
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Zoe Fisher
General Manager, WebSavvy
Zoe is an energetic and experienced professional with career achievements in management across operations, marketing, and sales environments. Having worked across corporate, private equity and small business environments, she uses her knowledge and understanding of business requirements to manage stakeholder expectations and deliver on key outcomes. She is currently GM at WebSavvy - a digital marketing agency aimed at demystifying digital.
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Dewani Shebubakar
Strategic Design Director, Today
Dewani is a thoughtful, tenacious and curious Strategic Design Director at Today. With over 10 years of experience in design, Dewani has worked in big global and small local agencies and has experience across education, finance, retail, automotive and government sectors. Dewani enjoys making peoples' lives easier and better in creative and impactful ways that empower and involve them.
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Ready to become a VIC mentee?
The best time to apply was yesterday – the next is right now. Let’s shoot for the stars together.