Broken Heart Love Affair has added additional expertise to its strategy offering, hiring Kristy Pleckaitis as VP of strategy.

Pleckaitis is coming off of more than three years at No Fixed Address, where she was most recently its strategy director, and has also been on the strategy team at FCB Canada. Her work includes the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s youth lifestyle brand MilkUp, Ontario Tourism’s “Where Am I?” campaign and the Canadian Down Syndrome Society’s “Anything But Sorry” campaign. She also brings digital experience from UX-focused roles at Nurun and Bell Media.

Jay Chaney, partner and chief strategy officer at Broken Heart Love Affair, says the hire is the latest in BHLA’s goal of “hoarding” the top talent in the industry.

“This is an important hire for us and frankly, it has not been an easy one,” he says, adding that the agency was looking for the “unique mix” of curiosity, decisiveness and deep expertise in brand creative. He says that’s vital to BHLA’s model, which is, in part, based around giving clients direct access to senior creative and strategic leadership.

This is the first major hire BHLA has announced in 2021, though it added its first creative hires and a managing director for its sister agency in the tail end of last year. In the last six months, it has picked up several new assignments, including AOR duties for the Royal Ontario Museum, a campaign to help MadeGood expand into the U.S. and adding Kruger’s full roster of brands to its mandate.