The Globe and Mail

Nancy Vonk (left) and Janet Kestin

Co-Chief Creative Directors, Ogilvy and Mather, Toronto
Why they’re the bosses: They oversaw a large part of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which continues to challenge the psychological toll on young girls and women wrought by the cosmetics and fashion industries.

Kestin & Vonk are like Lennon & McCartney: Sure, they’re talented on their own, but working together has produced a rare alchemy. Since pairing up 20 years ago on an assignment for Unilever’s Dove that increased sales by 73% over a four-year period—and also blunted the entry of a major competitor into the market—the pair has won fistfuls of awards for their work on the brand.

They’ve also been brave critics of the gender status quo. “If women aren’t fairly represented in the workforce broadly, and certainly in my world, business is depriving itself of half the great thinkers available,” argues Kestin. “It’s like having a whole side of your body that doesn’t work.”

If Kestin is a role model, it’s probably as much for how she has bent the job to fit other demands in her life, like her family. “As a woman, I think you do need to make your own rules to some degree—whether that’s the hours you work, or to work in a partnership—whatever works for you. I think you kind of have to create it because there isn’t a precedent, really.”

Vonk believes their work for Dove helped nudge the world forward—slightly. “I’d never be so egotistical to think that our team has changed the world,” she says. “We certainly haven’t solved a problem. But am I really happy to say the world is a little bit different, thanks to some of our work? Yeah, I think we have helped to make a difference.”

Judy John

CEO and Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett Canada
Oversees about 160 employees in Toronto and Montreal
Why she’s the boss: Leo Burnett forged a strong bond between the Moosehead-owned James Ready Beer and drinkers with its campaign asking fans to help “Keep our beer a buck.”

John laughs now when she thinks about how unprepared she was for her first job interview, in 1990—she followed a creative director around the office on his daily rounds, as he shot her occasional questions for which she had no good answers. But something about her enthusiasm impressed him. Still finishing up a degree at Centennial College, she landed a position as the first creative intern at then-superhot agency Chiat\Day’s Toronto office.

After six weeks in the print traffic department, she spent seven weeks in creative, where she wrote her first ad—a point-of-purchase poster for Nissan (on how to back up a car) that was honoured at The One Show, a prestigious New York-based awards show.

She joined Leo Burnett in 1999 as chief creative officer, and though she took on the CEO role in March, she says she remains “a tortured creative” at heart. “I pretty much hate everything I do, probably the week after I did it,” she chuckles. After it goes out the door, “I think, ‘Oh, I would have just changed one thing...’”

Jill Nykoliation

President, Juniper Park
Since opening in 2007, the Toronto agency co-founded by Nykoliation has grown from a staff of six to just shy of 100.
Why she’s the boss: Juniper Park created Virgin Mobile Canada’s “Membership” program, which gives customers insider access to special promotions such as Katy Perry concerts and discounts at H&M.

Nykoliation took an unusual route to agency leadership, moving from retail banking to a nearly 11-year stint at Kraft. At the packaged goods giant, she created a hugely successful program that established a direct relationship with consumers through initiatives like the launch of its What’s Cooking recipe magazine and a regular e-mail newsletter. After two years as a partner at the agency Grip Ltd., the chance to build Juniper Park came along. Partnering with three creatives, Nykoliation seized the opportunity.

“The fact that I’ve worked on the client side—I speak ‘client’—is more differentiating than me being a woman,” she says. “We have a number of client-side people on our team, and that allows us to go further up into the client organization. We can understand what they’re thinking, what the implications of some decisions are.”

Maybe because she only began working as head of an ad agency six years ago, Nykoliation says she’s never seen any inequality in the industry. Still, she sees herself as a role model for young women. “Gender should not matter. I hope I’m a role model for young men in the industry as well.”

Jane Hope

Vice-Chair, Taxi
Helps lead more than 360 people across seven offices, including two in Toronto and one in Montreal, as well as outposts in Amsterdam and Vancouver, with more expansion in the works.
Why she’s the boss: She’s one of the brains behind the creation of the Telus brand.

If the industry is conservative, Jane Hope understands (though doesn’t excuse) it: “In the advertising and marketing business, we trade in clichés­—that’s the fastest way to communicate a message. So [in a commercial] a sommelier has to be French, the bouncer at a bar has to be a huge muscular guy,” she notes. “Sometimes I wonder if we fall into the same sorts of role-playing.”

When Hope graduated from Concordia University with a bachelor of fine arts in the mid-1980s, she didn’t believe her father when he told her she’d never get a job. “Of course, it was true,” she says. Eventually, she started doing fashion illustrating for the Bay in Montreal, which led to a job at Cossette. In 1992, she and Paul Lavoie left Cossette to open Taxi, which was founded on the premise of what they called “holistic brand creative”—that is, disciplines like design, digital and creative all working together.

Which is partly why she’s not a fan of legislating diversity in the industry. “We’re talking about gender diversity, but I think diversity in all its forms is more and more the norm. I’m not just talking about culture and gender, but about the world that we live in that is open-source, cross-platform.”