Megan Lally, who co-founded independent Chicago agency Highdive more than seven years ago, was named its first CEO in August 2023. So far, so good. Lally led the agency to its seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth, helping earn Highdive the No. 2 spot on Ad Age’s A-List earlier this year.

Highdive also had its best new business year ever with 11 new clients in the first 11 months of 2023, including BetMGM and State Farm. The agency's work for State Farm led to it winning its fourth USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter. One of Lally’s biggest priorities was preserving Highdive’s culture as it moved from small agency to “powerhouse” midsize shop, she said.

“We’ve been very thoughtful about maintaining what has made us special,” said Lally, noting the agency hired 33 staffers last year to push its headcount to more than 100 employees.

Highdive formalized its company values in 2023 and created a peer-nominated award named after managing partner Louis Slotkin, who died last March after a battle with colon cancer. The Louis Award gives employees the opportunity to celebrate staffers who live up to the agency’s values, Lally said. The winner receives a trip to Paris, where Slotkin started his career.

Building healthy relationships with both colleagues and clients is essential to Highdive's success, Lally said. “We’re all human, and it feels good to work together like that.”

What advice would you give to your younger self?

When something is hard, it means you’re growing.

What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken?

Building a company from the ground up with no investors, no clients and no promises that anyone would want to work with us. 

While it felt like a big risk at the time, I tried to answer the question, “What’s the worst that could happen?” with insane specificity. (I mean moving-into-my-parents-basement specificity.) The answer wasn’t THAT scary. So the risk wasn’t as big as it felt and the rewards have been greater than I could’ve ever imagined.

If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing and why?

I would be trying to get my current job! I have always been an entrepreneur at heart, so I’d be working to build and run my own business.

What should the industry do to encourage more women and people of color into its ranks?

We should make high school students aware of and excited about advertising as a career path with more access to agencies and advertising professionals. We’ve been hosting high school students for field trips at Highdive, but there’s so much more we can be doing.

How will AI impact your job in the future?

AI is already making my job easier. I love it for writing help (memos, emails, social posts, etc.) and quick research on any topic. It’s also making my job more interesting and exciting. There are so many opportunities for how AI will impact creative and our ways of working. We’ve all been painting portraits and someone just introduced a camera.