A CLASS OF CREATIVE LEADERS

Melania began her professional career as a Brand Assistant at HWP Costa Rica, an agency founded in 1982 as a small creative boutique, which has become one of the leading advertising and communication agencies in Costa Rica and Central America.

Aware that digital platforms are essential for marketing and communication strategies, HWP developed a specialized unit in digital communication called BIT, where Melania started as the coordinator and a year later became the Department Director. “I knew from the beginning BIT was the best way to diversify the agency’s services, and a great prospect for me as an independent entrepreneur”. In January, BIT became an independent company, separating itself from HWP.

“We have grown in personnel and in revenues. Our clients trust their whole digital communication plans with us. This EMBA is the perfect opportunity for me to take this project in the right way with the right tools.”

Melania has a varied background combining design and ballet. While in high school, she studied Classic Ballet at the Costarrican Youth Ballet and went on to do Classic Dance Studies in the School of Art and Culture of Buenos Aires while completing an exchange in Industrial Design at the University of Palermo, also in Argentina.

She completed a training course to teach ballet in Costa Rica and a Professional Grade in Classical Ballet at the National Ballet School in Cuba before obtaining her BA in Product Design at Veritas University.

Before becoming the BIT Department Director, she worked as Accounts Executive for HWP with clients such as Scotch-Brite from 3M, Pfizer, Subway and AutoStar.

Max has a long experience in marketing and advertising with expertise in digital services, strategic planning and integrated communication. He built most of his career at the McCann Group, and was part of McCann Erickson’s operations in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Lisbon.

In his current role, Max is responsible for WMcCann’s global clients, many of whom he worked with in his previous roles, namely Coke, MasterCard, HP, General Motors and Colgate. Prior to this, he was a Business Leader at JWT, responsible for global clients management. He began his career as an Account Executive for Propeg Pernambuco and Plug Recife, and later worked as an Account Supervisor at Publicis before joining McCann in early 2000.

After studying Social Communication and Advertising at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Max went to Law School at UNICAP before obtaining an Executive MBA in Marketing from the Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo.

Max comes to the Berlin School to discover the real “new”, the most innovative approach to the constant changes in the industry. “We are changing so fast in the way we communicate and absorb content; we are right in the middle of a revolution. Due to the radical change in the type of product we need to deliver, it’s time to have journalists, artists, anthropologists, psychologists, gamers, and scientists working closely together. The traditional models need to be reviewed and our challenge is to create an environment fluid enough to naturally deliver solutions.”

Oliver is Managing Partner at FORB (Switzerland), founded by him and Roman Burch, a BSCL fellow. Prior to this he was Marketing Director at Notenstein Private Bank and Wegelin & Co. Private Bankers in Switzerland. His aim is to „disturb“ in a positive way. His first step in this direction was as a Communications Advisor for the Null Stern Hotel, where he provided advisory services for developing a new business model by breaking established conventions. Today he implements this mind changing experience in numerous works.

Oliver has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the St Gallen University of Applied Science in Switzerland, where he studied communication design and strategic management. He began his career as a journalist and produced a variety of radio features and newspaper articles for a number of news outlets. His last engagement was in 2010 in New York City as a financial and business Correspondent for the Financial Times Deutschland and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung Am Sonntag before he left journalism for marketing and corporate communication.

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Fluent in four languages and a citizen of both Brazil and the UK, Joana is a media executive with a truly international focus. She has produced TV shows, documentaries, and feature films leading up to her current role as International Producer for Neon Rio. Joana played a leading analyst role in the team that was awarded an International Emmy on “Lacos de Sangue”, a Brazilian-Portuguese telenovela co-production. Besides content production, she has also worked as a business developer and sales executive in the creative industries on two continents.

Joana came to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership because she aspires to be an innovation leader. She concentrates on the Brazilian TV industry, which has recently seen rapid change and expansion, delivering a series of challenges and opportunities in the years to come. “All of a sudden, a lot of content has to be delivered without any specialization, experience or know-how. How can we organize the relationship between cable networks, broadcasters and indie producers?”

Before joining Neon Rio as an International Producer in 2013, Joana worked in various positions in the media industries of both Brazil and the UK. Among others, she was a business developer with Pindorama Filmes and a Senior Content Analyst for TV Globo. Joana obtained a Master’s degree in International Business Management from the University of Grenoble and an MBA in Marketing from Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Pontificia Universidade Catolica.

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Jarrod comes from a client service background and is driven by his passion for growing effective creative teams that balance creative talent with commercial understanding. For the love of creative strategy, he even founded his own brand and communications consultancy called Free Man Advertising where he was the Principle Consultant. Throughout his career, Jarrod has worked for medium and large agency networks – Mortimer Harvey, FCB and Publicis on over 200 client brands, among such were Peermont Hotels Casinos Resorts, Emperors Palace, MTN, Colgate, Epic Foods, BBC, Ads24 and HSBC.

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Eduardo Hernandez is Creative Director at W/McCann.

Preceding this, Eduardo Hernandez was Professor of Creativity in Communications at ESPM in Sao Paulo.

Prior to these roles, Hernandez worked as a LATAM Creative Director for McDonald’s, Creative Director for McCann, Copywriter for Leo Burnett Brasil, McCann Erickson and Leo Burnett Advertising.

CEO and Owner of JWT/Fabrikant, Remy brings a wealth of experience to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. He leads one of the top ten advertising agencies in Switzerland, is a board member of the Mindshare Media Agency, as well as the Art Directors Club Schweiz, and is actuating as a donor for the Zurich Film Festival.

During his career he won more than 200 awards. His list of awards includes a Eurobest gold, a Cannes silver, as well as 120 Gold, Silver and Bronze Art Director’s Club awards. In addition, one of his cinematic commercials is a part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the Gunn Report 2011: JWT/Fabrikant ranked 24th in the worlds most awarded print ads & campaigns.

Remy began his career as an Art Director at Advico Young & Rubicam. In 2000, he was a Worldwide Creative Director for the client Siemens at J. Walter Thompson in Switzerland. He has also worked with major clients, such as Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Kimberly-Clark GmbH, Heineken, Unilever, Microsoft, Nestlé, IBM, Swissair.

Despite his successful career, Remy is coming to the Berlin School to learn how to best prepare for the future of the creative industry and develop a continually improving business model that will capitalize on creative value. Some of the questions Remy brings to the Berlin School are “how can the value of creativity be defined in an environment of constant change?” and, “What are the benchmarks of the future?”

Since, 2011 Sera has been the CEO of Material_Group, where she handles the overall leadership of Material Communications Group comprising: Material_UK (Experiential, Event, PR, Social), WORKS (Brand Development, Digital, Brand Activation), Material_WORLD (global consultancy), Material_DNA (digital sports branding) and Material_CONTENT (content creation & production). She has won awards such as Best Small Place to Work, Best Workplace in Scotland, UK Marketer of the Year, and Young Marketer of the Year, in addition to a slew of other awards in the Marketing and Communications fields.

Before becoming CEO of Material_Group, Sera was the Managing Director of Material Marketing & Communications Ltd for seven years. Previously, she worked as Account Director for KLP Euro RSCG, Account Manager for Slice PR & Events, and served four years as the Press Officer for Coalition Group (now Coalition Management). She graduated from Leeds University with a BA in Communication Studies with English. In addition to her impressive professional work history, Sera also runs a pop-up stall called ‘The Beautiful and the Damned,’ featuring vintage and contemporary or high-end street clothes and accessories, runs a blog about sustainable interior design and her vegetable patch, and is currently working on two books – the first entitled “Zen & The Art of Communication Maintenance”, a guide to working in the creative communications industry; the second entitled “A Confusion of Butterflies”, a novel set during the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II.

Sera came to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership to learn how to create impact on a wider level in her industry. “Undertaking this dynamic EMBA will enable me to not only continue to contribute to my own organisation but to my industry in a wider context, and to future generations of leaders from the senior managers within my own teams to the students I lecture.”

Wolf Schneider founded the agency Bricks in January 2015, combining his expertise with his many years of agency experience in order to establish a new model in the real estate market. Bricks develops products, services, branding, communications and marketing solutions for properties. Once brand and product strategy as well as the idea of a real estate project have been defined, Bricks provides the international distribution via the shareholder Engel & Völkers.

Before founding Bricks, Wolf worked at Scholz & Friends for 12 years as a Managing Director in Berlin and Partner at the S&F holding Commarco.

Wolf began his professional career as an architect and designer and as early as 1992 headed the interior architecture and design firm Baumheier, Schuck & Partner. He was later a Creative Director at EXPO 2000 and a Technical Director at Pixelpark AG in Berlin, where he was promoted to a Managing Director shortly afterwards. He became Managing Director of the Scholz & Friends Design Group in 2002 and subsequently Managing Director at Scholz & Friends Berlin.

Wolf is a founding member of the German Design Council, a member of the ADC, D&AD London, as well as the AGD. His work has won numerous international awards and nominations at the ADC, DDC, D&AD, Clio Awards, New York Festivals, Cannes Lions and Red Dot, among others. He has worked with clients such as Google, Deutsche Bank, Vodafone, Amnesty International, Volkswagen, Daimler Chrysler and ADAC.

Carolina is a professional in the user experience design field. Her expertise is in understanding the relationship between people, technology and business needs in order to design interesting and useful digital products and services.

In 2010 she founded Saiba+, a user experience consultancy. She plays an important role in the UX community, having created the first Brazilian conference dedicated to Information Architecture (EBAI) and hosting the annual World Information Architecture Day in Brazil.

In addition to being the Vice Chairman & CEO of Alia Group, Musa Awni Al-Saket also leads in various capacities several other organizations, including a radio station he started 9 years ago and a mill that produces organic and extra-virgin olive oil. He is also a board member for the Chamber of Industry and chairs a “Made in Jordan” campaign, as well as a non-profit education fund that helps underprivileged students finish university.

Al-Saket has learned that managing several different organizations requires a great deal of creative leadership, so he came to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership to not only learn best practices for leading diverse groups of people but also to help develop more leaders within his companies.

Al-Saket received his Bachelor’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University and a Diploma for Improving Production for Competitiveness from IFA Production Development in Sweden.

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Trevania Henderson is Principal and Founder of The Marketing Department in Boston, an agile, cost-effective alternative to a traditional advertising agency that brings together an on-demand network of seasoned professionals including researchers, art directors, writers, programmers, photographers and PR experts.

Henderson has won numerous awards for her creative work including most recently a Silver In-Awe Award, Integrated Consumer Campaign (2008) and the NEDMA Award, Creative Excellence in Lead Generation (2008).

Ana Cortat is a Brazilian based brand and marketing strategist and creative industry leader. She helps brands setting their future directions in terms of innovation, action, and communication. She often works to challenge behaviors and with challenging brands. Her recent experience includes leading brands such as Uber, Coca-Cola Company, Budweiser, Brahma, Fiat, Jeep, Banco Itaú, Telefonica/Vivo, Nestlé, and Natura.

Her work often extends into media and popular culture, in the belief that communication needs to walk side by side with cultural movements. Following, listening, and watching the consequences of political processes, gender identity, social inequality, and whatever else might be relevant for the social and cultural context. Her experience in research and communication strategy includes the participation in political campaign: eight state government and two Brazilian presidential campaigns.

She was nominated for the Caboré Award in 2007, Planner of The Year by the Brazilian Advertising Association in 2010 and appointed as Woman to Watch in 2014.

Simon is currently working as a Creative Partner for the advertising agency DDB Stockholm.

He has just returned to DDB Stockholm from a two-year stint at the sister agency DDB Copenhagen, after leading that office to their best ever result at Cannes Lions and a Grand Prix at the Advertising Effectiveness Awards. Prior to DDB Stockholm & Copenhagen, he has had stints in both the UK and Australia, working on great brands like Volkswagen, McDonalds, MTV & Unicef to name a few.

Prior to Stockholm, Simon worked as a creative in both the UK and Australia with McCann Erickson and The Works Sydney, working on great brands like Volkswagen, McDonalds, MTV and Durex. Simon’s awards haul includes a Titanium lion, a Cannes Cyber Lions Grand prix, 9 other cannes lions, the Eurobest Outdoor Grand Prix 2010, the Eurobest Outdoor Grand Prix 2011, 14 other Eurobest statues, multiple one show pencils, two Gold and 4 silver eggs at Guldägget (swedish awards), DDB’s highest accolade The Bill Bernbach award, the grand trophy, green trophy and platinum trophy at the international effectiveness awards plus awards at every other major show.

He was also recently picked out by creativity magazine as being a creative to watch. Simon chose the Berlin School of Creative Leadership to work with and learn from a global creative community. “I realize that to work on the global stage I must understand how every culture works and be able to adapt and use differing methods in differing situations,” he said. “I plan to leave Berlin with a better understanding of how exactly to do this.”.

Donna is a Creative Director who is known for her fire and passion. She is a winner of several local and international awards including Cannes Lions, Adfest, Spikes, One Show, LIA, Epica, Adstars, Boomerang, Kidlat, which lead her to become one of Philippines’ youngest Creative Directors. She always aims to create campaigns with lasting effects – whether to start a movement, influence pop culture, tell a memorable story, or a stuck-in-your-head song.

Pit is a Publisher at Fever Pit’ch.

Before Fever Pit’ch, Pit Gottschalk is the Editor in Chief at the Funke Mediengruppe. Prior to this role, Pit was the “Managing Director of Content Management” and before that “Head of CEO’s Newspaper Office” at Axel Springer, Europe’s biggest newspaper company.

Preceding this, he was Chief Editor for Sport-Bild magazine in Hamburg (approx. 4 million readership) for six years. Gottschalk joined Sport-Bild in 1994 as Reporter and quickly rose to Chief Reporter. In 1998, he joined Die Welt & Welt am Sonntag in Berlin, as Chief Sports Editor before returning to Sport-Bild as Deputy Editor in 2002.

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Sarah is the regional Director (Middle East) of CNC Communications & Network Consulting. Sarah is a seasoned communications professional with extensive international experience in organisational and personal development, regional talent acquisition and brand reputation/communication. British by birth, her ‘home’ has been the United Arab Emirates since 2006. She has also lived in France, Morocco and Hong Kong.

Sarah is passionate about communications influencing better outcomes for our society and environment. She is multilingual and holds postgraduate qualifications in marketing and corporate governance.

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Born in India in 1973, Suresh graduated from the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, specializing in communication design in 1997. He led teams for over two decades that have created animation films in 2D, 3D and pioneered Clay/Stop motion in advertising films in India, at a time when animation was relatively a new medium in the country as compared to the west. With his firm belief in the design process for communication solutions, Suresh has been instrumental in creating animated ad films by going beyond the traditional techniques and storytelling conventions that were popular then in India. His path breaking exploration of new visual styles to tell things differently yet effectively is perhaps the reason for an audience and a whole new industry that heralds an exciting phase of Indian animation.

Claire is Chief Marketing and Creative Officer at IROKO Partners, Europe’s leading content preparation and distribution facility.

Prior to this role, she worked as Creative Director, ECD, Executive Director at Loft London, and before this as Director of Creative Services for Liberty Global in the Netherlands. Here, she was responsible for implementing and unifying the creative development over all TV & emerging platforms across Europe, ensuring consistency of vision for the UPC & Liberty Global brand strategy and development of creative thought. Within her tenure she has launched and managed the On Demand business unit of the company developing and deploying On Demand services across multiple markets – and is responsible for the management of an exceptional, award winning team of 20 + creatives with an additional 30 across Europe.

Before joining Liberty Global in 2001, Jones worked as the Creative Director for Independent Television News where she was responsible for the operational set up of the promotions and marketing department for the first ubiquitous news channel to launch across multiple digital platform simultaneously within the UK market. She has also worked for Prima TV in Romania and Orbit Satellite TV & Radio Network in Italy. Jones received her Bachelor of Honors in Fine Art at University of Wales and received a Master of Science in Electronic Imaging at Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.

With twenty years of experience working with top international TV Broadcast & Communications companies, she came to the Berlin School of Creative Leadership to help grow her own independent thinking and ambitions as well as gain new perspectives within her own industry. “I would like the opportunity to shake up the knowledge I have gained, and grow. I wish to find new words and new skills to help further foster my experience and build a bright future. I have been following the Berlin School of Creative Leadership since its inception with fascination and desire and now it’s time for me to put into action my learning and take a step towards opening up this new and exciting world.”

“Whilst working within Liberty Global I have had the golden opportunity to establish and build a highly successful internal creative agency within a Global organization catapulting the reputation of my team within the International TV landscape; and I will soon embark on a journey to further champion creativity within the organization by expanding my remit across the wider group. To attend the Berlin School EMBA will assist me in building stronger and more challenging thought processes, and nurture the desire I have to apply leadership through creativity in a highly technical and complex digital world.”

Before starting on her professional path as a marketer, Paola worked for 5 years in the world of theater as an actress, floor manager, stage manager, producer and PR manager.​

She then navigated through a variety of positions with Walmart Mexico, Televisa and Clarus Digital, the latter as account manager, before moving on to Isobar Mexico where she took on several leadership roles within the agency. In 2017, Paola worked as a head of Google’s Mexico creative team, The Zoo, while also holding three professorships at, respectively: the Academia Mexicana de Creatividad, Needed Education and IED Moda Casa de Francia. Since 2020, she’s served as Head of Creative for Facebook’s Mexico team.

Paola is also the co-founder of @tumugirls, a content and experience platform that promotes empowerment, determination and confidence in tween and teenage girls, providing them with the necessary tools for their journey to adulthood that will enable them to reach their full potential and make their dreams – whatever they may be! – a reality.

Passionate about digital and technology as a way of life, Paola loves how brand communications can deeply connect a person to a brand, establishing meaningful experiences and opening dialogue.

Leonardo Khéde is a Sales Director with over 16 years of experience in digital marketing and 10 years in Adtech across Brazil, America and Italy. He is currently Field and Platform Sales Director at Verizon Media Brazil, the rebranded integration of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft acquired by Verizon in 2015 and one of the prime content, advertising, and technology organisations in Brazil working with brands such as Huffpost, TechCrunch and tumblr. Leonardo is responsible for the expansion of Verizon Media’s advertising and programmatic business in Brazil, leading a team of 22 Account Directors.

Before the creation of Verizon Media, Leonardo worked over a decade at Yahoo! Brazil in number of Sales and Business Development roles.

Leonardo studied Business Administration at Universitá degli studi della Tuscia, Italy, and Economics at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He hopes that the Exectuive MBA in Creative Leadership will empower him to lead in both life and career, in an era “where change is consistent and perennial.”

Ulrike began her career in the software industry at Microsoft almost 17 years ago. She started out working on the international versions of the software and over time transitioned to managing content creation and web experiences. Since November 2013, she has been responsible for leading a cross-functional team to re-envision the Microsoft Developer Network’s strategy and direction.

In her own words “by far my most interesting and satisfying assignment was the opportunity to lead a content organization of about 175 full-time writers, site managers, and editors through a transformation from product-centric technical writing and publishing and turn them into a creative, customer-centric communications team during the release of Windows 8 as part of a larger effort to modernize Windows and bring it into the tablet age.”

Ulrike believes companies need to re-examine their approach to cross-discipline collaboration and explore what it means to have a truly interdisciplinary approach. “I would like to research collaborative practices of marketing, creative, and product development teams in my industry sector by identifying challenges and successes of a cross-section of different-sized businesses.”

A German native, Ulrike has a liberal arts background, holding a BA equivalent from the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg in English Philology, and an MA from the University of Oregon. She also studied towards a PhD at the Department of Germanics at the University of Washington, where she is currently an Affiliate Faculty Member.

As a Creative Director for Japan’s premier advertising company, Razorfish Dentsu, Midori Ikematsu has worked with high-profile clients such as Guthy-Renker Japan, Air Asia, Cartier Japan, and many others. Her job has required her to make the transition from simply taking the responsibility for the content of an advertising project to understanding communication infrastructure and its technical aspects.

Midori comes to the Berlin School with 21 years of experience in the creative industries, including film production and advertising. She has won numerous awards, including the Telly Award for use of humor in advertising and the Clio Award for print media. Midori is the recipient of the Luerzer’s Archive Scholarship for the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

As Head of Identity and Communication at UniCredit Tiriac Bank, Anca Nuta is responsible for internal & online communication, media relations & executive communication, brand management & corporate marketing, corporate giving & events as well as corporate sustainability.

Anca managed the launching of the 1st Independent Contemporary Art Center in Romania, PAVILION UNICREDIT and has supervised the UniCredit and UEFA Champions’ League partnership in Romania since 2009. She also initiated a Literary Debut Contest in partnership with one of the biggest publishing houses in Romania, that reached it’s 3rd edition in 2011 and a number of 200 applications.

Liudmila has more than 10 years of experience in leading international advertising agencies in Moscow. In her current position, she supervises the agency’s product, leads the creative department and is responsible for the development of Contrapunto’s philosophy and vision.

Liudmila studied English and French at the Moscow State Linguistic University before joining Saatchi&Saatchi in 1996 as an Account Executive. She then worked as a Senior Copywriter at BBDO and later became one of the key members to launch the new creative agency Instinct/BBDO in 2003.

In the following years, Liudmila worked as a Creative Director at BBDO, Instinct and Saatchi&Saatchi, and since 2010 she is helping develop the newly born creative branch of BBDO Moscow – Contrapunto.

Liudmila is also a Member of the Board and one of the founders and strategy developers of the “Deti Nashi” Charity founded in 2006 in support of orphans and children without parental care.

Liudmila joins the Berlin School because of her desire to become a better leader in a highly competitive and fast moving industry and help her agency get more worldwide recognition. “I feel there’s a great deal that I can learn about improving myself as a leader. Even though my present agency is still young, we need to get noticed more, we need to be brave and we need to