Ming Zhong (left) has been hired by Ethnicity Matters as a creative director. He will join Waseem Shaikh (right), who has been promoted to the same role.

Ethnicity Matters has expanded its creative team with several new hires and a key promotion, strengthening a key area for an agency that has seen considerable growth with its clients.

Among the new hires is Ming Zhong, who joins Ethnicity Matters in the CD role. Zhong has spent the last four years as internal creative head at Dyson in China, but has also worked in senior creative roles at McCann, TBWA and JWT in Shanghai, working with clients like McDonald’s, Cadillac, Adidas, Absolut and HSBC.

Zhong will work alongside Waseem Shaikh, who the agency has also promoted to serve as CD. Shaikh has been with Ethnicity Matters for one year, when he was hired into the ACD role. He has worked on many of the agency’s clients, including Rogers, Coca-Cola, GM and RBC.

Ethnicity Matters has also hired Mary Ann Stephens as group account director. Stephens has a varied background and has worked internationally and in Canada, both as a digital marketing consultant and with the networks – most recently BBDO in Sri Lanka, where she built and developed the agency’s digital team. The agency has also hired Princia D’Souza as an account supervisor and Kiki Zhao as a copywriter.

The new hires have been made in response to the agency’s growth with existing clients Rogers, Kruger, GoDaddy and BC Dairy. In September, creative agency No Fixed Address took an equity stake in Ethnicity Matters, formalizing an existing relationship between the agencies and adding its multicultural marketing expertise to the NFA network.