Mother names global leadership team

Independent agency Mother has reorganized globally, promoting four executives to a new network-wide leadership team as its offices work more closely together on the creative and business sides. The new team consists of Felix Richter, named global chief creative officer; Teri Miller, global chief client officer; Katie Mackay-Sinclair, global chief brand officer; and Chris Gallery, global chief strategy officer. All four positions are new—the agency’s first global roles besides CEO. Miller additionally takes the role of U.S. CEO, succeeding Peter Ravailhe, who has left the company. Joe Staples, U.S. CCO, is also leaving. The agency does not plan to replace Staples’ role, as Richter will be more involved in the U.S., working with New York CCO Oriel Davis-Lyons and Los Angeles CCO Jed Cohen. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here The new leadership quartet will report to global CEO Michael Wall and Mother founder Robert Saville. The new structure formalizes a way of working on global clients that Mother has already been embracing for Uber, Google, Dow Jones, Blackrock, Electronic Arts and others. “After the pandemic, a lot of the discussion has been around hybrid work—in office, out of office,” said Richter. “What people talk less about is how people work together across offices much more now, how fluent everybody is in Zoom reviews and stuff like that. Some of the work I’m most proud of in recent years was made this way. So it made sense to formalize that.” “As we’ve seen more and more clients looking for an alternative globally at the enterprise level, we decided to make it more official,” said Miller. “How we pitch and win together, how we operate our global clients together—which we’re getting more and more looks to do—how we’re sharing best practices among our teams. Now we are more formally doing it, but in a Mother way so it feels more like a friend and family network than anything overly structured.” Richter and Miller both joined Mother in 2022—as London CCO and U.S. president, respectively. Richter, who came from Droga5, will continue to oversee creative in London while working closely with the CCOs across Mother’s offices in New York, L.A., Berlin, Singapore and Shanghai. Miller, who previously worked at 72andSunny, has helped lead strong growth for Mother USA, which has added 11 new clients in the past year alone, including EA, General Motors, BlackRock and General Mills. Mackay-Sinclair and Gallery, meanwhile, are longtime Mother London execs, each with more than 15 years at the agency. They started as strategists before becoming heads of strategy and later partners of the London office. Enter the free 2025 Young Creatives Contest here “This is a world-class team. And they are proven and high-quality practitioners for Mother,” said Wall. “We believe that there has never been a better time to be a truly independent creative agency that is focused on its clients, genuinely cares for its people and can act with clarity, speed and at scale in today’s marketplace.” Both Richter and Miller said a key advantage for Mother is its culture, which they said is scalable globally. “The family environment we have in the way we treat each other and work with each other—I do think that’s different,” said Richter. “It is a relationship business. We all like each other, and there’s nothing to get out of the way of,” said Miller. “We know and trust each other. All the leaders here pick up the phone and call each other. It’s just a lot more fluid and fast. As an independent, speed is your weapon, and you have to kind of lean into that.” Along with its creative, Mother has also grown other offerings in recent years, including Mother Design in the U.S. and U.K., the launch of Media by Mother and investment in independent creative businesses SuperBloom House, Run Deep and Small World.

Mother names global leadership team

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