Juniper Park\TBWA revamps leadership team, promotes Toto to president

Juniper Park\TBWA has made a series of changes to its senior leadership team, including promoting former managing director David Toto to president and hired Mark Fitzgerald as group creative director.

Toto assumes responsibility for the agency’s leadership and its new content arm, Bolt Content. He will continue to report to CEO Jill Nykoliation.

The Paris native first joined the agency in 2009 from Zulu Alpha Kilo, where he was client service director. In the decade since his arrival, he has played a key role in the agency’s North American growth and digital transformation, the launch of Bolt Content and played a vital part in the 2015 merger of Juniper Park and TBWA\Toronto.

Toto’s career has also included stops at Grip Limited, as well as deputy managing director at TBWA\Paris and U.K. roles. “David is masterful at leading both change and growth,” said Nykoliation in a release.

Fitzgerald, meanwhile, has more than 25 years of agency experience, most recently as chief connections officer at Gravity. The early part of his career was at McCann (where he helped create Molson’s iconic “I Am Canadian” work) followed by stops at Leo Burnett, Downtown Partners, FCB and Publicis.

“Mark is bringing years of experience, a strong creative pedigree and a reputation for building lasting relationships with both his clients and his team,” said Juniper Park\TBWA chief creative Graham Lang in a release. “He is also a natural leader, mentor and an extraordinarily nice human being. We couldn’t ask for a better person to lead the creative charge on one of our biggest accounts.” 

The agency also promoted three people to managing director positions: Shelly-Ann Scott to managing director, CIBC—leading the CIBC business and Simplii Financial; Lisa Wall to managing director, Capital Group—leading the client globally and Adam Lang, managing director, Nissan United—the bespoke team created specifically for Nissan Canada.

In addition, Neil Walker-Wells has been promoted to the role of group creative director. Walker-Wells has been with the agency for five years, leading some of the agency’s most high-profile work—including GoDaddy’s efforts with the Toronto Raptors, Ontario Racing, New York Fries, Pfizer Emergen-C, Simplii Financials and Intuit Canada.

The management changes follow a period of rapid expansion for Juniper Park\TBWA, which has made 32 new hires since the beginning of the year to support new client wins including UNICEF Canada, Groupe Media TFO, Intuit TurboTax and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Evening Epic.

 

Chris Powell