Toronto-based Veritas has boosted its exec team with the hiring of two VPs into key roles that reflect the PR shop’s evolving structure.
Krista Webster, president of Veritas, says the new VPs will step into newly-created roles to oversee the agency’s business units which have been clustered into groups based on the type of communication work.
Kim Roman joined last week as group VP of the marcom group, and will oversee business units from the web-tech-media space and food and drink category, including clients such as Subway, Microsoft, CBC and Wind Mobile. She’ll be responsible for liaising with clients on a daily basis, managing business portfolios and budgets and working with the account directors and the agency’s internal creative portal, the Growth & Innovation Lab, says Webster.
The marcom group is a cluster of clients that require both corporate and consumer-facing communication, she says. (For comparison, the second client cluster includes the health/retail/beauty category, which requires less corporate communication and is much more consumer-focused in PR.) Roman’s history as the VP at the GCI Group and communication manager at McDonald’s gives her this background, Webster adds.
The third cluster will be headed by Martin McInally as SVP, leading the corporate reputation group. In his role, he’ll be tasked with working with corporate-specific client PR, government relations and reputation management. Though the team is a smaller one, Webster says it’s a unit she wants to grow – with the goal of being the same size as the other two units. She adds that this specialty is also meant to work across all the agency’s core client base.
The new roles are designed to blend the Growth & Innovation Lab and accounts in a more hybrid fashion, trying to prevent silos from popping up and create more integration at the PR shop.
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