OUR GLOBAL
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Our global executive leadership team is led by DDB Worldwide’s Global CEO, Alex Lubar. They are a bunch of talented and nice, relatively normal people who lead the DDB Worldwide network across all six of our regions inclusive of North America, EMEA, Latina, Australia/New Zealand, India and Asia. As you get to know DDB a little better, we thought you’d enjoy learning a little bit more about each of our leaders, too.
Alex is DDB Worldwide’s Global CEO focused on growth, working closely with DDB’s global leadership team on advancing DDB’s global strategic plan. Prior to his elevation to Global CEO, Alex was most recently Global President and Chief Operating Officer, DDB Worldwide. Before that, he was with McCann where he held several regional leadership roles including President of McCann’s North America region, President of McCann Asia Pacific, and CEO of McCann London. Alex has also held leadership roles with agencies including Grey and BBH.
Alex was born and raised in London.
His father is American, his mother is French, his wife is Mexican and has three young children, Lucas, Dylan and Siena. He plays tennis with enthusiasm, periodically runs until injured, and is in constant search of snow in which to wipe out.
Chaka was recently appointed President & Global Chief Creative Officer of DDB Worldwide. She is a world-renowned creative talent having been named Campaign’s Creative Leader 2022, was featured in Campaign’s Top 10 Creative Leaders consistently for the past 5 years, and has also held a top spot on Adweek’s Creative 100 list. While in her previous role as CCO of Leo Burnett, she fueled several Agency of the Year awards and major creative accolades including being named Network of the Year at Clios, ADC, Dubai Lynx and Spikes. Chaka’s multiple award-winning campaigns include “Raise your Arches” and “Lights On” for McDonalds, “The Missing Chapter” for P&G, “One House” for Suncorp” and “Lost Class”.
Sobhani has also served as jury member and President numerous times at the world’s greatest awards shows including Cannes, D&AD, One Show, the Andy’s, Art Directors Club, Eurobest, Clios, LIA’s, the IPA, the Creative Circle and the British Arrows. Sobhani sits on the External Affairs Committee for the Design Museum, as well as on the board of D&AD, The One Show, the British Arrows, Creative Circle and Facebook EMEA Creative Council, Snapchat Global Creative Council and WARC Advisory Board.
Before joining DDB Worldwide and Leo Burnett, Chaka spent a number of years at the leading independent agency Mother and worked on large global brands including McDonalds, Coca Cola, Google, Kelloggs, Samsung, Boots, Skoda, Disney, AXA, Morrisons, Tui, Premier Inn, Sky, P&G, General Motors, Stella Artois, National Lottery, Agent Provocateur and Adidas.
Originally from Slovakia with London and NYC agency experience, Tomas has led strategy on global brands such as The Coca Cola Company, New Balance, The Ford Motor Company, Colgate-Palmolive and McDonald’s. Since joining the network in September 2022, Tomas has focused on codifying DDB’s strategic excellence into a universal language for the network’s global planning community with a focus on emotional advantage, creative impact and effectiveness.
Tomas has also initiated DDB’s partnership with Parley For The Oceans, becoming DDB’s sustainability spokesperson. He is a member of DDB’s Global Sustainability and AI Councils and is leading the ongoing development of proprietary strategic tools with DDB’s Global Strategic Council that are used to impact effective creativity that fuels client growth. Tomas is also the co-chair of the 4A’s Strategy Committee and sits on the WARC Global Effectiveness Council. He previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at VMLY&R.
As Global Chief People Officer for the DDB Worldwide network, Roisin’s role is to optimize DDB’s people-centered activities to ensure continuous growth for our over 8,000 employees around the world. She’s a firm believer in giving talent the power to propel their careers, have impact, and do some of the best work.
She is a network lifer who has DDB proudly cursing through her veins. Her partnership with DDB Global CEO Alex Lubar, and the wider executive leadership team, ensures we hold ourselves accountable to nurturing and bringing to life an exceptional company culture, embodied through our values, beliefs, and behaviours.
Roisin is passionate about authentic leadership and building inclusive cultures. A people connector whose greatest joy is to support exceptional talent to do amazing things and helping people unleash their full potential to make them proud of who they are and what they do.
Mike is the Global CFO of DDB Worldwide. An accomplished finance leader for over 20 years, Mike began his career with Omnicom Corporate in 2002 before transferring to DDB in 2007 as the US Controller. In 2014, Mike became CFO for DDB EMEA and rose to take on his current role as Global CFO in 2020.
A driving force within the DDB network, Mike oversees the strategic financial planning process across all global regions. He is in lock step with DDB WW’s Global CEO Alex Lubar and provides direction to all DDB regional and local agency leaders on financial plans, forecasting and reporting into Omnicom. As a member of DDB WW’s global leadership team, Mike’s sharp financial acumen and guidance provides a solid foundation which fuels DDB WW’s growth.
Mike is an Australian and US citizen. He graduated from the University of Western Australia and has enjoyed living and working in Australia, the UK, US and Canada over the years. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife JoAnna, their two children and dog.
Glen is currently the Global President and Chief Operating Officer of DDB Worldwide. He also oversees Europe, Middle East and Africa, DDB’s largest region. Glen joined the London office (then BMP DDB) in 1995, cutting his teeth on Tony Blair’s election campaign in 1997 before running the Vodafone and Unilever accounts. He spent 10 years in South Africa as Chairman and CEO, building the DDB network across the African continent before returning to London to manage the network’s international relationships. Glen is recognized for championing creativity within the network and his intuitive leadership.
Susie Walker is Global Chief Creative Operations Officer at DDB Worldwide, working closely with Chaka Sobhani, President & Global Chief Creative Officer, creative leaders across DDB, and the global leadership team. Her remit encompasses talent, culture, creative excellence, and leading the creative council.
Under her leadership, the network’s creative product has led to DDB being recognized as 2023 Creative Network of the Year at both D&AD and Cannes Lions.
Susie spent nearly ten years at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world’s most respected benchmark for creative excellence. At Lions, Susie was VP of Awards & Insight leading the teams who researched and designed each of the specialist Lion Awards, engaged with the 3,000+ global companies who enter and produced insight-rich content based on decades worth of data. Launching many Lions including Glass: The Lion for Change and working across Lion’s DE&I initiatives, Susie partnered closely with UN Women’s Unstereotype Alliance. She co-produced original research with the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media on representation and has presented this research at the UN.
Susie has 20 years’ experience working in creative communications and culture. Prior to Lions, Susie worked in creative arts at the British Film Institute, Shakespeare’s Globe and University of the Arts, London curating and delivering talks, events and education projects. She is headquartered in DDB’s London office.
Sarah Todd is Head of Global Clients for adam&eveDDB and DDB. Since joining adam&eveDDB in April 2023 as Client Strategy & Integration Lead, Sarah has worked closely with many of our global client teams to bring the highest levels of client leadership, creative and strategic excellence, offer innovation, and network connectivity to our client relationships.
Sarah sees her role as being a coach and community builder to enable our highly talented teams to be the strongest possible growth partner for our clients. She works closely with agency and client teams to understand the business, cultural and creative opportunity for the brand to maximize its impact in people’s lives. Her skills include optimizing the talent working on the team, building new operating models, and identifying how to bring the best of the network to bear for client success. During her career, Sarah has worked extensively leading integrated communications, marketing capability, and model transformation for global clients including Unilever, GSK, Heineken, Bacardi, and P&G. She previously worked as Growth & Integration lead on Unilever at WPP for 5 years and prior to that was UK CEO of Geometry Global.
Kristin leads the charge in developing, evolving, and merchandising DDB Worldwide’s growth products. She joined DDB from Omnicom’s Sparks & Honey where she was recently Chief Marketing Officer driving their growth. Kristin also oversaw Sparks & Honey’s Culture Briefings and Advisory Board. Prior to that, Kristin spent more than a decade at the biggest titles in publishing including Saveur, Conde Nast, Travel & Leisure, and Allure. Kristin left the publishing world to be co-founder of Delicious Contents, a full-service, editorially-focused creative collective that redefined content creation across the food-sphere. She started her career at FCB in New York. Her favorite OOO days are ‘adventure days’ with her daughter where they explore the new and iconic in food, art, events, and history in NYC and all over the world.
