Laura Maness

As Global CEO—only the sixth in the agency's celebrated 105-year history—Laura's building on Grey's international capabilities and AKQA Group's expertise while bringing people together from across the network to deliver breakthrough, high performance work for some of the world's most loved brands. In addition to shaping Grey's global strategy in 50+ countries, Laura is committed to building on the strong foundation of Grey's storytelling prowess and famously effective work by fueling a values-led culture of camaraderie, creativity, innovation and continuous impact.

Before being appointed Global CEO of Grey, Laura served as CEO of Havas Group's North American flagship agency, Havas New York, driving a culture of purposeful growth and steering a turnaround that earned the agency Digiday’s Most Innovative Culture, Ad Age’s Best Places to Work, AdExchanger’s Best Collaborative Agency Team, The Drum’s Network Agency of the Year, Digiday’s Employer of the Year—and, was the first major network agency in the US and globally to become a certified B Corp. She also oversaw several specialist practices including a culture-first creator studio (Annex88) and a data-driven customer engagement agency (Havas CX).

A recognized industry voice speaking at ANA, Ad Age, Adweek, CES, Digiday, Economist, S.H.E. Summit, YMS, Allyship & Action, HBR and more, Laura's accolades include: one of the first agency leaders to take 3% Conference's Pledge for Pay Equity; Working Mother of the Year and Changing the Game Quantum Leap winner by She Runs It; Campaign magazine Female Frontier honoree for Championing Change; Creativepool's Top Influencer of the Year, Top 25 CEO, Top 100 Creative Leader; Digiday's Top Boss for Worklife; a finalist for The Drum’s CEO of the Year; and, most recently, was celebrated as Act Responsible's Ad Industry Champion of Good at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Laura ignites meaningful change as a sustainability thought leader and Board Director—her board roles span the world’s largest NGO for abandoned children (SOS Children’s Villages), high growth startups (GNB and Alembic) and nonprofits (B Lab U.S. & Canada, 4A’s and ACT Responsible). She's also a Village Global advisor/investor, a founding member of Chief, Women’s Purpose Community, Kindred and ForbesWomen Forum, and a co-chair of 50/50 Women on Boards—the leading non-profit global education and advocacy campaign driving the movement toward gender balance and diversity on corporate boards.

Laura graduated from Loyola University Chicago’s School of Communication (returning in 2019 to deliver the commencement address), and later completed executive education certificates from Stanford Directors’ College and Harvard University. She currently resides in Manhattan’s north end of TriBeCa with her husband and athletic son and enjoys SoulCycling, Pilates and bold California reds. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @lauramaness chasing sunrises as a proud member of the #5amclub.