WONGDOODY has hired Grace Francis as Global Chief Creative and Design Officer, making Francis, who identifies as transgender nonbinary, one of the sector’s few C-suite leaders from the community.
Francis, currently Chief Experience Officer at Karmarama which is part of Accenture Interactive, will join WONGDOODY, a creative agency for Infosys, in March 2022. The newly created role will be based in WONGDOODY’s London office, where they will report to global CEO, Benjamin Wiener.
Francis will help lead the company’s creative vision, including providing leadership and direction for each of its global studios. These include those in North America, Europe, India, and APAC. They will also help to attract and support diverse creative talent and foster a culture of inclusion across WONGDOODY’s team.
Francis previously held the Chief Experience Officer position at Accenture Interactive’s advertising agency Droga5 London. Before joining Accenture Interactive in 2019, they were the Head of Experience and Design at Grey and was a founding partner of Grey Global Consulting.
Francis is passionate about intersectional inclusivity in the creative industry and founded the mentorship practice elsewhere and participates in Outvertising, the advertising industry’s LGBTQIA+ advocacy group. They also have a role in the diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) leadership team at Accenture Interactive.
Francis has led mentorship sessions for Cannes x Spotify See It Be It members, The Art Directors Club and Google’s I Am Remarkable. They also sit on the board of Doconomy, a tech start-up invested in new ways to measure and tackle climate change.
Wiener said: “Grace is a transformative creative leader who can guide our company and our clients into the future we need to embrace. Creativity at the highest level has always been at the core of who we are. Grace’s arrival both brings us back to our roots and offers us a clear vision of where we are going, and where the industry as a whole is going – putting human experience at the forefront of evolving businesses and technologies.”
Tracy Wong, Chairman and Co-founder at WONGDOODY said: “Our incredibly ambitious search for an industry-leading creative visionary has come to an incredibly ambitious conclusion. Grace will lead us in so many ways internally and externally. As a champion of radical inclusivity, where everyone in our company can collaborate safely and freely, we can reach higher and farther than ever before.”
Francis said: “Creatively, we have never been more empowered to make things that the world wants and even needs to exist, yet we are living in a moment when the whole of history and humanity are available through a small black rectangle in your pocket. The task for all of us in this industry is to bring more meaningful things into the world and not add to the noise. To do that with a group of culturally and creatively diverse people, at an organisation built on the foundations of creative democracy, is an absolute gift and I couldn’t ask for more.”
