Mylène Savoie has been hired by Tank Worldwide to establish a new “borderless” division and lead a big client win in the healthcare space.

Savoie – who spent the last four years as president at McCann Montreal – is taking on the new title of SVP and GM, Borderless. In addition to overseeing the pharma portfolio, she will help incorporate Tank’s “borderless” agency team.

“The borderless model means opening offices in key areas of growth,” says Marc Lanouette, CEO and co-founder of Tank and CEO of parent network the Grey Group. But with limited staffing in cities around the globe, and a new global client coming on board, Borderless will take advantage of talent and local knowledge within the global Grey network, while also bringing back most of the work to Canada, which has an “amazing” talent pool that the rest of the network can take advantage of as well.

One of Savoie’s other priorities will be to assist Tank in onboarding this new global client. It cannot yet disclose the win, but it joins a roster that already includes pharma heavyweights like GSK, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Abbott. Lanouette points out that healthcare is a space Tank has long been successful, and it has driven much of its growth in recent years at it has become the agency’s primary focus.

For the recent win, there will be some senior staffing served by Tank’s New York office, but the majority of the work will be done in Canada, which Lanouette says is great for the industry here.

Lanouette says the agency has hired roughly 100 new staff over the last 12 months, a period when many agencies have grappled with furloughs and layoffs. He says that while it’s been a challenge hiring new people who are not going to come to the office, the plan is to continue the agency’s growth: the plan is to have Savoie hire 50 employees between its Toronto and Montreal offices alone over the next three months.

Tank was rebranded two years ago to Tank Worldwide to reflect its global positioning, new offices opening in London and New York and partnerships with agencies in Tokyo and Beijing as part of its Asian growth strategy.

In November, it was announced that Tank’s parent Grey will carry on its “Grey Canada” name, despite holding company WPP merging with AKQA globally.