Sydney, Australia — Public relations agency Red Havas’ Sydney division has announced three senior appointments as the new business continues to build in a period of significant growth for the agency.
The new hire includes Kelly Lane, the new group account director, followed by Sally Heydon, the new senior account director and has also appointed Mauricio Ruiz to the newly created role of senior publicist.
Alex Bryant, executive director of Red Havas Sydney PR, said that they are delighted to welcome this talented trio to the Red Havas team.
“Their breadth of client experience is well suited to the evolving needs of our business and clients looking for agencies with deep expertise, and the ability to flex across sectors and services to help them achieve and exceed business objectives. With our current and new client mix, we have strong vertical experience across travel, food and beverage, retail, luxury and lifestyle, technology, and government – with that experience bolstered even further with Kelly, Sally, and Mauricio on board,” Bryant said.
Lane holds extensive experience in brand storytelling and client partnerships bringing over a decade of understanding across a range of sectors namely retail, technology, travel, finance, property, and healthcare. She joins Red Havas from her role as external communications manager at the Australian telecommunications network nbn. Prior to that, Kelly worked with global communications agency Weber Shandwick, where she was most recently vice president and client relationship lead.
Lane has managed programs spanning consumer, corporate and sustainability communications, content, social media, and events, and worked with some of the high-value global clients like ALDI, Facebook, IBM, Garmin, and Honeywell.
On the other hand, newly appointed senior account director Sally Heydon is a consumer brand specialist who has worked extensively with brands from start-ups to fast-moving consumer goods, devising and implementing attention-grabbing, multi-channel campaigns, overseeing large scale events, and setting the news agenda of the day in busy press offices for her clients’ benefit.
Heydon has honed her expertise for over a decade in roles as senior account director for Finchco Agency and Adhesive in Sydney, and in account-focused roles in London, with both ENGINE Mischief and Palm PR.
Meanwhile, Mauricio is an expert in the luxury fashion, lifestyle, beverage, and hospitality sector who has applied his talents to drive outcomes for high-value clients namely ghd, Versace, Dolce &Gabbana, The Met Gala, Diageo, and ACCOR Group. He brings more than six years of international experience managing PR, communications, and influencer marketing initiatives to the agency.
Mauricio joins from Sydney-based senior publicist and communications roles at TMC PR and EVH. Prior to that, he worked as a communications consultant and event manager with KCD in New York and Mexico.
Commenting on the three new senior hires, Bryant said, “With these three new appointments and recent promotions of Kirsty McGorty to Business Director and Ourhai Turkhan to Group Account Director we have a strong senior bench to support our clients in 2022 to deliver on their strategic integrated communications programs. We have some of the smartest and most creative minds in the business but equally important is their desire to collaborate and continue to build on the wonderful people-first based culture at Red.”
Recently, Red Havas welcomed Kyra Shakspeare to its newly created position of client services director for their Brisbane office. Additionally, the public relations agency also welcomed three new senior hires to Organic Pacific, the specialist entertainment communications agency division of Red Havas.
