Just ahead of its fifth anniversary, Toronto agency Rain43 is growing its team.

After hiring Laura Davis-Saville, its director of strategic planning, in January, the agency has made another 15 new hires working across all departments.

Prior to joining Rain43, Davis-Saville was a strategic planner and account director at Lowe Roche and an account director at BBDO prior to that. She primarily worked on non-profit clients at both agencies, as well as RBC while at BBDO.

On the creative side, the agency has hired art directors Ryan Speziale and Madison Turner. Speziale comes from stints at TBWA\Toronto and Lowe Roche, while Turner was last a freelancer at The&Partnership following nearly two years at Anomaly.

Joining them will be copywriters Mike Albrecht and Andrew Payne. Albrecht joins from OgilvyOne, while Payne last freelanced at JWT after a year at what was formerly Capital C before it was purchased by KBS.

Outside of creative, the agency his hired Liam Brown as a strategic planner from Lowe Roche. Rain43’s new account hires are Chuck Blumberg as account director (from BBDO), Paisley McNair as account supervisor (from Lowe Roche), Theo Wolski as account executive (from corporate branding agency Distility) and Heather Osbourne as account coordinator (from shopping discount startup Checkout 51).

The agency has also hired Edge Watson, who spent the last 10 years as finance manager at Blammo, as its new controller.

Rounding out the new hires are five new production staff working in the agency’s studio.

John Yorke, partner and president at Rain43, adds the agency is planning to finalize and announce five additional hires in the near future. He says this brings the headcount at the agency to approximately 45 full-time staff, and above 50 when including freelancers and contractors.

“A lot of the hires are intermediate-level staff, but they’re also young, energetic, very positive people,” Yorke says. “We’ve grown the agency, year to date, by almost 40%. We always planned for this kind of growth, but now is just when it’s coming to fruition.”

“On a skill-set level, they’re all people with a good mix of backgrounds from digitally-focused shops and companies,” he adds. “We always say we’re a smart agency for a smart world, so we hired people that understood what that meant.”

So far in 2015, Rain43 has added Homewood Health, Sentry Investments and the Independent Energy System Operator’s saveONenergy brand as new business wins, facilitating the growth. Yorke adds that work from its government clients, like the Ontario Ministry of Health and WSIB, has begun to pick up again after a slight downturn during last year’s election.