Sam is an accomplished diversity & inclusion leader (with a CMO background) who has operated across scores of high-profile businesses and sectors, run large teams, and loves making a difference. After having senior roles at Omnicom, she established her own consultancy Representnation.
Sam Phillips launched her EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) practice having spent twenty-Eight years in Chief Marketing Officer and Chief EDI Officer roles which culminated in her leading EDI across nine thousand people and over fifty businesses in a complex, matrixed organisation. Sam now operates as an interim /consultant across the breadth of the EDI spectrum with an eye on the broader sustainability / ESG agenda. When she takes on new roles, Sam brings her strategic, consumer, leadership, and C-suite know-how but she is also adept at ‘doing the doings’ of EDI.
Sam’s approach is flexible and enquiring as she doesn’t believe that one size fits all in the EDI arena. She has a proven ability to work across sectors and drive genuine advances - significantly changing hearts, minds, and metrics in the process. Sam has helped many businesses break personal and corporate barriers as she elegantly deduces what’s really going on and works with leadership to plan forward from there.
Prior to setting up her own business, Sam spent fifteen years at Omnicom – a global leader in marketing communications. Her greatest focus in the latter years was leading businesses and their employees from thinking of EDI as a tertiary issue to establishing it as a top-down leadership priority, with strategy, vision, and data that drove bottom-up trust, energy, voice, and change.
Sam’s parallel roles were CMO Omnicom Media Group UK and Assistant Dean (global) of Omnicom University – Omnicom’s global Executive Education leadership programme in conjunction with Harvard Business School professors.
Prior to joining Omnicom Sam spent nine years as Marketing Director of Time Inc and Head of Marketing at ITV. She also cut her teeth as an account handler at advertising agencies J. Walter Thompson and TBWA, leading client business such as Wonderbra in the ‘Hello Boys’ era.
Sam has also served as a UK Government champion for disability, and is a Trustee of Valuable 500 (changing the business world’s perception of disability), and the coronavirus-focused National Bereavement Partnership. She has spoken on leadership, diversity and inclusion at 10 Downing Street and the Council of Europe, and has received the Trailblazer for Change, Women To Watch, Europe and People Of The Year awards.
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