Hispanic agency Dieste's longtime chief creative Aldo Quevedo is leaving at the end of the year, and will be replaced by Paco Olavarrieta, who joined the Omnicom Group shop a year ago as chief content curator.

Mr. Quevedo has been at Dallas-based Dieste for 17 years, most recently as both president and chief creative officer. He is also chairman-elect of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies and is due to take over in April 2013 as chairman. He said today that will still happen.

Mr. Olavarrieta, a leading Hispanic creative who has worked at large Hispanic agencies and done two startups, will assume the chief creative office role on Jan. 1, 2013, and split his time between Dallas and Dieste's growing office in New York, where he is based now.

Mr. Quevedo said he has been talking with Dieste's Chairman Tony Dieste and CEO Greg Knipp for several months about his desire to do something different after 17 years, and clients and Dieste staffers were told today about his departure.

He said he is pondering several options for his next job, both on the agency side and elsewhere, and is open to other ideas.

"It has to be on the creative side of the business," he said. "I'm not sure if it's going to be an agency. One option is totally different, to do with technology and looking at creativity from that angle."

Mr. Quevedo said he became the eighth employee at Dieste soon after Tony Dieste started the agency with then-partner Warren Harmel. He said Mr. Dieste contacted him early on when the new agency was pitching for Pepsi's Hispanic business. "I said 'win the business and call me when you have an agency'," Mr. Quevedo said. In fact, he helped win the pitch, working as a freelancer from his native Mexico.

He said he plans to take some time off now, and expects that whatever he does next will continue to involve the U.S. Hispanic market.

"I'm a specialist in this market so that 's the value I can bring to a company," he said.