Social impact agency Public has made over a dozen new additions in recent months to support a number of new projects and its client offering.

The additions come after the agency – which is focused on helping brands drive social impact in their marketing – picks up a number of new assignments with companies such as TD, NBCUniversal, Converse, Aviva and the LCBO. Paul Estey, COO and co-founder of Public, said the agency is also scaling its business and looking to increase the areas where it can work with clients, from consumer-facing projects and brand-building work to employee engagement.

Leading the new hires is Grant Garrison (pictured above), who has been hired as VP for Public’s U.S. operations in New York to help the agency serve clients such as NBCUniversal and Converse. Garrison joins from Los Angeles-based social impact agency Good, where he was managing director of its consulting division.

In the creative department back in Toronto, the agency has added Jon Lane as creative director and Chris Lynn as creative lead. Lane brings experience from the creative teams at Publicis, KBS and Innocean, while Lynn is coming off of four years at Idea Couture, where he led design work for brands including Campbell’s, HTC, FedEx, AARP and Novartis.

Also joining the creative team are art directors Abby Klages and Nahin Shah, who have been hired full-time after completing internships at the agency. Tarik el-Khateeb, who joined the agency last summer, has also been promoted to design director.

The shop has also hired a pair of engagement leads. Paul Rivait has been hired as engagement lead for social media and analytics (having previously been on brand-side social teams at BMO and Virgin Mobile, as well as agency-side at Critical Mass) and Rima Karapetyan has been brought on as engagement lead for marketing and digital (having previously held roles at WE Charity, Diamond Integrated Marketing and JustEat). Also joining the engagement team at Public is Chloe Tse, who is working as an engagement specialist and leading content creation for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment’s “Erase the Hate” campaign, having previously been a freelance writer and editor in Toronto.

Public has also hired new client specialists Georgia Cottrelle (who recently completed an internship with the agency) and Sydney Kirkland (who spent the last year at The&Partnership). They join a client services team that saw the addition of Olga Mugyenyi – a former managing partner at TBWA\Kinaya in Kampala, Uganda – as client director in June.

Rounding out the new hires are director of project operations David Oliver, who was formerly senior manager of global resourcing and operations at Idea Couture, and project lead Kelsey Sutcliffe, who was most recently creative services manager at Australian student marketing startup Unidays.