NEW YORK, March 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, sparks & honey, Omnicom’s (NYSE:OMC) cultural intelligence consultancy, known for its global network of culture and trend experts, announced the newest members of its Advisory Board. Three new professionals have been added to the fold, Aspen Institute’s Judy Samuelson, “Gen-Z Historian” Kahlil Greene, and youth culture expert Maarten Leyts. They join over 67 seasoned leaders — including Indra Nooyi, former CEO and Chairman of PepsiCo, Dr. Brian Pierce, former Director Information Innovation Office of DARPA and Lynne Greene, former Group President of Estée Lauder — across technology, organizational development, education, retail, government, media and more that form the consultancy’s now 70-person strong brain trust.
The newest Board members introduced themselves at the company’s special 10th Anniversary Culture Briefing last week titled, “Cultivating a Cultural Brain Trust”. The briefing discussed sparks & honey’s unique Learning Organization model through the lens of the Advisory Board. Their expertise will guide sparks & honey work and perspective on emerging trends, especially as it relates to the company’s two new consulting practices that have been rolled out this year tied to Youth Culture and Policy & Philanthropy. For example, they will help brands understand how Gen Z shape the future’s consumer and political landscapes.
“We curate our Board of Advisors very deliberately for depth and breadth of experience, commercial acumen and a range of diversity factors and we are so thrilled that these three exceptional thought leaders will add tremendous range to our new practices,” says Annalie Killian, sparks & honey’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships.
Judy Samuelson is the founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program and a vice president at the Aspen Institute. Signature programs under Samuelson’s leadership include a ten-year campaign to disrupt Milton Friedman’s narrative about corporate purpose, a multi-year dialogue to produce the Aspen Principles of Long-Term Value Creation, and a partnership with Korn Ferry to rethink executive pay.
"I couldn't be more excited to join sparks & honey's advisory board at this critical juncture. I've long admired sparks & honey for having a finger on the pulse of trends in business and society, and that's especially been the case during the extraordinary disruptions of the pandemic.” Samuelson continues, "There's so much important work to be done on addressing the inequities laid bare by recent years, and I'm thrilled to roll up my sleeves and get to work with sparks & honey."
Kahlil Greene, also known as the “Gen-Z Historian”, is a New York Times recognized digital educator with over 500,000 followers and 15mm views across his TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles. One week after his 19th birthday, he was elected the first Black student body president in Yale's 318-year history. Working as an independent consultant, Greene uses his unique leadership experiences and Gen-Z perspective to provide a youthful, forward-looking, and much-needed intervention to antiquated workplace strategies, with a focus on what young employees need to succeed.
Greene says, "sparks & honey is at the forefront of uncovering and analyzing culture that drives trends across industries. As a young person investigating culture and how it shapes society, I'm excited to both advise on and learn from their wealth of data."
Maarten Leyts is a pioneer in studying youth culture, creators, and emergent trends. With Trendwolves, the company he founded in 2006, he has been translating insights around youth trends and young families into products, strategies and value for European brands - from banking to the cultural investments of the European Union.
“The immense strength of an organization such as sparks & honey lies in its unconditional eagerness to continuously reinvent itself and thereby be miles ahead as a strategic intelligence partner. Collaborating with incredible knowledge experts from very different sectors is an enormous added value for any company, brand or government.” Leyts continues, “I am particularly happy to add my nearly 20 years of knowledge of youth culture, marketing and communication and am confident that together with the experienced and driven sparks & honey group, we can tackle the most complex challenges.”
These new collaborators will help sparks & honey answer the questions that are on the minds of every executive right now. How should my company show up? Are we relevant to young consumers? How do we function in a more equitable fashion? This work will be reflected sin new practice areas, intelligence reports, client work, culture briefings and more.
For more information on sparks & honey, its Advisory Board and work, visit: https://www.sparksandhoney.com/.
About sparks & honey
sparks & honey is a cultural intelligence consultancy helping organizations understand explosive and immediate cultural shifts, as well as cultural movements that develop over time. They leverage their custom SaaS platform, called Q™, in combination with a powerful human network to quantify culture, decode the future, and ignite transformation for brands and their consumers. Produced in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, sparks & honey’s recent intelligence report, Precision Consumer 2030, was presented from the stage at Davos in 2020. sparks & honey is a part of the Omnicom Precision Marketing Group.
About Omnicom Group Inc.:
Omnicom Group (omnicomgroup.com) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries. Follow us on Twitter for the latest news.
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