Walton Isaacson appointed Christine Villanueva as senior vice president, head of strategy, effective immediately. Villanueva will be responsible will be for all research, insight, analytics and strategic planning across the agency network while working out of Walton Isaacson’s New York office and reporting to Jeff Davidoff, who joined the agency as its first president last month.
“Christine’s role is essential to our commitment to innovation and insight driven work,” Davidoff said in a statement. “She is uniquely qualified to take on this leadership role and build on our current strategic strengths as her career has been steeped in both multicultural and broad-based consumer insight work and analytics.”
Villanueva, who holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan, joins the agency from McCann New York, where she has served as executive vice president, executive strategy and analytics director since April of 2015. While with McCann she oversaw work for brands including Nikon, Office Depot OfficeMax and Nespresso. Prior to that she spent a little over two years as executive vice president, head of planning, research analytics at GlobalHue, working with clients including Coca-Cola, HBO, Walmart, USBank, Chrysler, Jeep, Pepsi, NBA, United Airlines and Microsoft. That followed over three years as a partner and planning director with Ogilvy & Mather New York, and six years as a vice president, senior strategic planner with Saatchi & Saatchi New York before that.
“I fell in love with Walton Isaacson because of the true diversity I encountered, the kind that celebrates all the ways in which each of us experiences the world we live in,” Villanueva said. “I was born outside of the United States and that immigrant experience adds to my appreciation of variety and of the magic that everyone brings to the table.”