2019 Jury

Diana is the Head of Marketing for Mars Wrigley Confectionery Canada, member of the Mars Wrigley Confectionery Management Team, and leads the Inclusion and Diversity council at Mars Canada. As the Head of Marketing, her team is responsible for the vision, portfolio strategy, innovation and brand communication for leading brands including M&M’s, Excel, Skittles, Snickers, Mars, Starburst and Twix.

Diana proudly started her career with Mars Canada over 10 years ago on the Chocolate business as Sr. Marketing Manager Bars, moving shortly thereafter to Seasonal. During her time with Chocolate she delivered the short term business targets and long term strategy for the bar business, created the award and recognition program for Chocolate associates and co-led the creation of the segments Cocoa sustainability efforts. In 2011 Diana moved over to Petcare business as Brand Director for Cat Main Meal. During her time with Petcare, Diana won the Global 2016 Make the Difference Award for the turnaround of the Cat business. Prior to Mars, Diana worked in in Marketing at Pepsico on brands including, 7up, Mountain Dew and Gatorade.

As a mother of two young girls, Diana is deeply committed to building a tomorrow that includes better opportunities for all. With a strong passion for female leadership development and for inspiring an inclusive and diverse workplace at Mars, Diana commits her personal time to inspiring others through coaching, mentoring and by sharing personal experiences.

As Vice President of Customer Marketing at Walmart Canada, Jennifer is accountable for the strategic direction and implementation of the enterprise marketing plan.
Jennifer has a unique combination of CPG and Retail marketing and merchandising leadership experience at the world’s largest food and retail organizations. Her career began in the consumer packaged goods industry, where she launched and built brands at General Mills, Rubbermaid, and Nestle. After 10 years of packaged goods brand management, Jennifer expanded her marketing credentials into retail starting as Director of Field Marketing at Walmart Canada. During her almost 10 years at Walmart Jennifer has led multiple Marketing and Merchandising functions, including Customer Strategy, Cosmetics Merchandising, and Pricing.
Jennifer is the Executive Sponsor of Women in Retail at Walmart Canada, which is dedicated to building female talent within the organization. She is also a member of Walmart’s Diversity & Inclusion Leadership Council. As an active member of the Marketing community, Jennifer was recently invited to join the Canadian Marketing Association’s Customer Experience council, and she judges numerous marketing awards including the CMAs and Promo Awards.

In a career that has spanned across many global markets, Adam Bleau has focused on the emergence of strategies and technologies that can help solve brands’ brand-building needs. Adam brings almost 2 decades of industry experience, with a proficiency in solving a multitude of business problems for clients. Most recently, as the Managing Partner for Fuse Marketing Group, he is responsible for leading the transformation and growth of the agency as it expands into new markets, offerings and client verticals.

Drawing from a longstanding career in brand activation, Nuala has an award-winning track record for consistently crafting insights and ideas that engage consumers and shoppers, build long-term brand value and – most importantly – influence behaviour to drive sales.

Prior to joining Geometry, Nuala ran her own successful creative shop specializing in entertainment and brand activation. After earning international acclaim for creativity the company was acquired. Since joining Geometry in 2011, Nuala has produced breakthrough campaigns for clients such as S.C. Johnson, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever, ALDO and Mercy Ships.

D’Arcy Finley is Vice President of Brand Marketing at Maple Leaf Foods. With 15 years of Marketing experience, D’Arcy is a respected creative and innovative leader with a passion for building and renovating loved, trusted, and purpose-led brands. He has guided award-winning campaigns across the company’s suite of brands (Maple Leaf, Schneiders, Greenfield Natural Meat Co, Prime, Natural Selections, etc.), and was part of the Maple Leaf team recognized as Marketer of the Year in 2013 by Marketing Magazine. 

A creative marketing leader, Bob excels at helping emerging brands shape and grow categories, leading to significant business growth. His many success stories include developing and directing the marketing strategy that propelled Mike’s Hard Lemonade from start-up to North American category leader in just four short years.

Bob’s scope of experience ranges from working with CEO’s to develop effective brand strategies; to creating strong and dynamic brands; to building campaigns with a full spectrum of marketing possibilities. His clients have included Molson Coors, Canon, Cadbury, Roche and Calvin Klein.

As the CEO of an advertising agency focused on food & beverage, Bob has built a team that understands the increasingly diverse spectrum of media and consumer connection and knows how to use them to drive business results. Under his leadership, the agency embraced the digital transformation of the marketing industry and helped their clients leverage the seemingly unlimited opportunities.

Bob not only has significant experience in regulated categories including alcohol, natural health products and children’s products, he also knows how to help brands do exceptional work within their creatively restricted parameters.

Earlier in his career, Bob helped shape Canada’s tobacco cessation strategy. Working with Health Canada, NGO’s and other interest groups, he led the development of a tobacco cessation campaign that’s recognized internationally for its effectiveness. As a member of the Minister of Health’s Advisory Committee on Tobacco Cessation, Bob engaged with world-leading authorities on issues related to tobacco marketing and served as an expert witness in the Federal Government’s suit against the tobacco industry.

Bob’s more than just a fan of the underdog. His passion is for pushing smart, challenger brands to the forefront against significant competitors and challenges by out-thinking, out-maneuvering and out-working category frontrunners. It’s the same drive that took him from a small agency in Winnipeg, Manitoba to a thriving agency in Toronto that, not surprisingly, is challenging its own category leaders.

An accomplished and charismatic leader, the impact of his work is evidenced through his longstanding client and agency relationships.

Raul is an internationally awarded Creative Director with over 19 years of experience working for agencies in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Not only has Raul won at every major national and international award show, but his work also has garnered the attention of main stream media and pop culture. His work has made the front page of the Toronto Star, has been the subject of local news across the globe, has landed on the front page of Reddit (twice), was spoofed by Rick Mercer, and has been blogged by 50 cent, Pharrell Williams, and tweeted by Rosario Dawson, and Zoe Kravitz.

Outside of advertising, I am a big video game junkie. In 2013, I was ranked 51st overall in Call of Duty Black ops 2 (for about 15 minutes).

Carolyn is the Vice President of Omnichannel Merchandising at Rexall, a wholly owned subsidiary of McKesson Corporation. She leads the team dedicated to improving the customer experience through new and emerging tools and technologies that connect bricks-and-mortar and digital. Carolyn’s passion for data driven marketing fostered a 12-year career focused on using customer insights to drive business decisions. First, with market research firm, NPD Group, and later managing two of the largest loyalty programs in Canada at Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian Tire. Carolyn takes pride in her ability to develop talent and build high performing teams which has been critical to her success leading large transformational innovation projects.

She holds an MBA from Ivey Business School at Western University and a Bachelor of Design from Ryerson University.

Irena’s 19 year career in Marketing spans from Shopper Marketing at retail in South America to designing marketing plans for iconic brands at Procter and Gamble.
After completing her MBA, Irena joined P&G and has worked on the development and execution of Marketing Plans, New Initiatives, Product Launches, Brand restages and National Campaigns to support scale programs like the Olympics. Irena has worked across 15 different brands, leading large multi-functional teams. Today Irena leads the Shopper Marketing team for Shopper’s Drug Mart and Loblaw and serves on the leadership team of the Women’s Network at P&G. Irena is the co-founder of Forward Together and currently Chairs the Strategic Board.

A graduate of the Université du Québec à Montréal, Yann has built his reputation as a graphic designer, creative thinker and leader, most outstandingly on brand com¬munications and retail design.

With an eye for merging creative disciplines, Yann has an insight for integrating interactive and print design as well as creative technology, advertising, and architecture for numerous prestigious clients such as adidas, absolut, Videotron, SAQ, Red Bull, Cirque du Soleil, Rona, Vodafone and Pratt & Whitney, to name just a few. Known for his ability to keep his cool, rally the troops, and keep team morale high (even at times when others might go crazy), Yann is your definition of a fun guy to work with. He spent close to two years as in our Amsterdam office where he was in charge of the creative vision and output of the atelier, leading a group of creatives from all over the world.

Leading highly acclaimed multidisciplinary creative teams for the past few years, Yann has earned the most prestigious awards of the industry, including silver and bronze Lions in Cannes. His work has also been rewarded by many esteemed prizes: The One Show, the Advertising & Design Club, the Type Direc¬tors Club, the Digital Marketing Awards and the Marke¬ting Awards, Award of Excellence from Communication Arts magazine, Boomerang Awards, Créa and the Grafi¬ka Awards.

In addition, Yann was an instructor in graphic design at the Université du Québec à Montréal for several years.

David Rosenberg joined Bensimon Byrne in October 2000, and became a Partner in
2007 after a management-led buyback restored the firm to its independent roots. His
goal is to help make the Bensimon Byrne the best place to work in Canada - famous in
equal measure for both the quality of its product and the quality of its environment.

Trained as a writer, David has rebranded The Canadian Football League, helped create
the “You’re Richer Than You Think” campaign for Scotiabank, launched Joe Fresh for
Loblaw Co.’s, created the CBC’s 2018 Winter Olympic thematic, and has won hundreds
of industry awards for his work on Scotiabank, Nike, IKEA, MacDonald’s, Pro-Line,
Stupid.ca, Bombardier, Lexus and the Royal Ontario Museum. He has worked on
Liberal political campaigns both federally and provincially, producing award-winning
creative for Justin Trudeau’s historic climb from 3 rd place to the Prime Ministership, with
a majority government. He delivered this story at The 2016 Cannes Lions International
Festival of Creativity, in a keynote entitled “How Risk Taking Ads Helped Trudeau Win.”

David is married and has 3 lovely children who have all gone into the arts. He’ll be
working until he’s 108.

Rabih is a Canadian entrepreneur and investor passionate about human experiences and data optimization.

After 8 years at L'Oréal managing multiple consumer brands and shaping his visionary approach to consumer experience, he launched in 2007 Youville, an experiential communication agency specializing in retail, sponsorship and social media. The agency’s innovative strategic approach is based on human centric communication driving business results and data collection.

In 2016, Youville merged with Haussmann Park and became YHP, the Experience Agency. True to Rabih’s original vision, YHP’s mission is centered around redesigning the interactions between brands and individuals while putting data at the service of the human experience.

He also currently heads startups in the fields of retail measurement, lead generation and client retention.