DEPT expands Australian offering with new senior hires

Sydney, Australia – DEPT has appointed a raft of new hires including four executives in specialist roles as part of its strategy to expand its offering. The new appointments will support the transformation into a full-service offering for the global digital agency in Australia. The Sydney team will be working on key clients including eBay, Ancestry, and Twitch, as well as continuing its growth across the region with the Melbourne-based Two Bulls/DEPT®. 

Two Bulls/DEPT®, a digital product studio based in Melbourne, joined the global digital agency in September last year. With clients including Beyond Blue, Service Victoria, Hasbro and MailChimp, Two Bulls/DEPT® specialises in solving complex challenges with simple digital solutions by converging innovative engineering, creative perspective and thoughtful design.

Joining the company are Antonio Castiglia as strategy director, Sam McGraw as account director, Michelle Krikowam as social media manager, and Michelle Ramsay as senior copywriter.

Castigilia joins after strategy consulting gigs with global luxury media company Highsnobiety and DDB, bringing his knowledge of the content and brand space to build a new strategy offering for DEPT®. Meanwhile, McGraw brings over ten years of account management and business development experience working with some of Australia’s most well-known brands, most recently CommBank, where he helped build the account service offerings within the bank’s internal creative team.

Krikowam joins with a diverse range of experience across the gaming space and will be working on the DEPT® social offering as the team’s first social media manager on the newly won Twitch ANZ project. Ramsay, on the other hand, has worked with top brands and agencies, such as the Nine Network, Beyond Productions, Film Australia and most recently with Resolution Digital, part of the Omnicom Media Group. She joins the team specialising in eBay Seller Communications, writing content that resonates with sellers. 

“It’s been an exciting journey for the Sydney team ever since joining DEPT® in 2022. We’ve gone from a small in-house digital team, specialising in personalised content, to a pioneering full-service digital agency, resourcing up to bring the DEPT® ambition to life in Sydney. These hires, combined with the TwoBulls/DEPT® team in Melbourne, allow us to offer end-to-end digital solutions. Watch this space, it’s only the beginning,” says Jessica White, DEPT® Sydney General Manager. 

“We’re very excited to see the Sydney DEPT® team growing at this pace,” says James Kane, CEO of Two Bulls/DEPT®. “Bolstering our creative strength on top of our already very strong digital product expertise ensures a powerful offer for brands in Australia and beyond.”

Since launching in APAC in Dec 2021, DEPT® now has over 700 employees across Melbourne, Sydney, Mumbai, Singapore, and Manila.