Mother New York Taps Peter Ravailhe as CEO

Mother New York's new CEO is professional rugby-player-turned-marketing exec Peter Ravailhe. Mr. Ravailhe replaces Andrew Deitchman, who recently left to pursue an opportunity with a media and retail concept. In his new role, Mr. Ravailhe will be responsible for growing the agency through new business and bringing in new disciplines, as well as helping to make the agency more globally minded. Global CEO Michael Wall, who joined the agency in May, said that Mr. Ravailhe's knowledge of both the U.S. and international markets will help further the agency's ambition of having its three locations in New York, London and Buenos Aires work together more seamlessly. "His nature and background will be very complementary to that," said Mr. Wall. "He's at that moment in his career where he's done an awful lot of great stuff and he's ready for something more entrepreneurial and he's ready for something more adventurous." Mr. Ravailhe will work alongside Mother New York Co-Founder Paul Malmstrom and Exec Creative Director Michael Ian Kaye. "Part of the Mother kind of way of doing things is to find not only people who are ambitious and smart but are well-intended and ambitious for the right reasons, and we knew he had all that in the moment that we met him," said Mr. Kaye. Mr. Ravailhe comes to Mother New York from TBWA in Los Angeles, where he's been managing director and global brand leader on Gatorade, Airbnb and Netflix since he joined in 2013. Prior to that, he worked at TBWA Sports Lab in Sao Paulo as managing director for a year, after launching a consultancy firm VT-3 Group in London. Mr. Ravailhe was a professional rugby player until 2004, playing for Paris and Leicester teams. His career was cut short by a spinal injury and he began looking for a desk job "earlier than I thought I was going to," he said. Mr. Ravailhe studied sports management, so began his marketing career with Virgin Active, its health club brand, in London. In 2005 he joined Adidas as head of World Cup and team sports marketing and communication for France, later becoming a lead for strategic planning for global sports marketing for the company in Amsterdam. "Mother was able to install a unique creative culture that's made the work stronger and cultivates lots of different approaches to the clients' business problems and solutions," said Mr. Ravailhe. He noted that that he's always viewed Mother's employees as happy because in previous jobs "it's always been extremely hard to recruit people from Mother, and that's a great sign of the culture they have." Mother New York was founded a dozen years ago with Mr. Deitchman, and partners and co-founders Mr. Malmstrom, Linus Karlsson and Rob DeFlorio.

Mother New York Taps Peter Ravailhe as CEO

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