Starcom Continues Long History of Being Female-Led With 5 New Execs

Publicis media agency Starcom is riding a new business high, raking in big accounts like McDonald's. Along with its expansion, Starcom is changing how it goes to market, investing in digital transformation, DEI initiatives, training and development in an effort to streamline its products. To lead this transformation, the agency elevated five new leaders to Starcom's U.S. leadership team. The leadership team also includes Kristin Haarlow, who continues as Starcom's chief investment officer U.S., Stephanie Stopulos, who continues as executive vice president, managing director, LA, and Pat O'Connor, who remains chief financial officer U.S. The agency's new U.S. CEO Michael Epstein spoke with Adweek about the leadership changes. "Starcom has a long heritage and history of strong female leadership. And continuing that tradition, I think, is important to the culture and the agency, and to the people that are here," he said. Epstein joined Starcom in September after previously leading Dentsu's Carat. Since taking the executive position, Epstein's been focused on what he calls Starcom's five critical areas of focus—people, products, clients, growth and operations. With a new leadership team in place, he aims to integrate each of those focus areas into agency culture. Scaling new technology and implementing change across the organization is a priority for the CEO. "I think Starcom has been dominant for a long time, and in a way, it's used to doing things in a certain way," he said. Women run the company Epstein may be CEO now, but Starcom has a long history of women at the top. Kathy Ring, the company's previous CEO, filled the role for 20 years before stepping down last March. Women still lead the agency and fill 70% of its management roles. Adweek spoke with Einan, Glure, Harrison and Knecht about their experiences at Starcom, their goals as leaders and what's next for the agency. Maureen Glure, chief client officer U.S. Glure was one of several chief client officers at Starcom, before the agency recently consolidated the role under her leadership. "It's really just a part of my job that's given me the most joy throughout my career," she told Adweek. "I was thrilled and really excited to sink my teeth into that work." She will focus on onboarding new clients like McDonald's and making sure they "hit the ground running" at Starcom. Glure will also focus on supporting existing clients and streamlining services. Some clients, Glure said, are trying to do the work that Starcom could do for them, but time prevents the agency from addressing all client needs cost-effectively. For example, some clients do work themselves that Epsilon PeopleCloud could do for them. To reduce client costs and make it possible to utilize PeopleCloud, Glure is looking for ways Starcom can automate operations to free up teams' time for that insights-driven work. It also falls to Glure to ensure clients receive support on new specialities like CTV, retail media or commerce. On navigating challenges as a woman in the advertising industry: "You know, as you start to really escalate in your career, the timeline of that is around the same time that you get married and choose to start a family. And so it becomes a sort of very interesting dance, if you will, in terms of being able to balance it all. I hate using that word, because it's obviously not fair to say that it's balanced," said Glure. "It has been a challenge to figure out how you bring in major changes to your life when your career has been your first baby, if you will." Kim Einan, head of U.S. strategy "When I first started, I sat right across the aisle from Maureen. So we have been working in supporting each other for quite some time," Einan told Adweek. The 23 years she's spent at the agency have gone by "pretty fast," she added. During her time at Starcom she helped launch the agency's creative arm. As strategy lead, she'll be updating the agency's planning process, including how strategists utilize PeopleCloud. She'll also be focused on inclusivity, including research on "the language of identity," which informs the agency on how people identify. Einan wants to redirect strategists from looking at averages. "Averages hide the nuances that exist, particularly between white consumers and historically marginalized communities," she said. The agency is looking closer at the data to find the nuances and then determine if it needs different strategies to reach different groups. On navigating challenges as a woman in the advertising industry: "I would say most of the challenges that I have faced have been probably a little bit more self imposed. I would say that when I show up as my most authentic self, a lot of those challenges fall away. I know that isn't aligned with your theme for International Women's Day, but I have been so fortunate to be working at a company that has been so supportive of women in leadership that I consider myself probably, in the industry, an anomaly," she said. Diane Harrison, chief talent officer Harrison comes to Starcom from GroupM and has almost 20 years of experience at top-tier agencies. About four years ago, she held the svp, human resources role at Publicis Health. Now, she's rejoined the holding company. "I decided to join Starcom because of their reputation, their culture, their belief systems and their clients," she said. "And the fact that Michael Epstein is the CEO, because we worked together in the past." The leader will work across resource management, DEI, culture, learning and development and coaching. Harrison has seen a disproportionate number of employees of color moving towards a performance improvement plan, and she will focus on addressing that in the immediate term by providing more support to marginalized employees. She'll locate the barriers that may be hindering employees of color and analyzing promotion rates for those employees, to make sure they are trending with white employees' promotion rates. "We have long-tenured employees at Starcom. More than I've seen in other agencies I've worked for, so that they have a nice base of history and experience and collective belief system that's really enriching from an agency standpoint," Harrison said. On navigating challenges as a woman in the advertising industry:"I'm the first-generation college grad in my family. So I think that was unique in of itself, to find my way into this world. But at the beginning, I did not see enough women in leadership roles in that proverbial boardroom. And I was also trying to have it all—the family, the career—and then having debilitating imposter syndrome that I had to deal with. So I think just acknowledging that I have these situations that I'm experiencing and sharing with others, and letting them know that I may appear to have have it all together, but it's not actually true," she said. Karla Knecht, chief operating officer U.S. "I'm a bit of a lifer around Starcom," Knecht told Adweek. She climbed the ladder after entering the company as a coordinator in 1995. Most recently, she created the chief client offer role under previous CEO Kathy Ring and was one of the agency's several chief client officers until stepping into the COO role. "I'm really committed to continuing our heritage of being a strong female oriented organization, and continuing to support the many diverse recruiting initiatives that we have at play," she said. As operations lead, Knecht will partner closely with Harrison to discuss talent needs across the organization. She'll also partner closely with Publicis Media to support and role out initiatives across Starcom's sister agencies. Part of the process will be gleaning insights from Starcom's bespoke agency teams, like the one it operates for Best Buy, to find what works well and apply those learnings across all its clients. One example is automating quarterly reporting and automating data instead of manually assembling reports. On navigating challenges as a woman in the advertising industry: "I've dealt with a lot of the same challenges that many women in the business or marketing realm have dealt with, and really in struggling sometimes to find that balance between work and personal, I will tell you that one of the reasons why I've stayed at Publicis Groupe is that I've made personal choices along the way to slow down my career or speed up when I've been ready. And they've always been incredibly embraced and supported," she said. Publicis Groupe Reorganizes U.S. Media Leadership Team