Winner: Brooke Shepard
Executive Creative Director, Weber Shandwick
Brooke Shepard leads a team of community managers, creative writers, digital strategists, graphic designers and video producers. He has a unique ability to grab people's attention and attack a problem in an entirely new way—and is perhaps a teacher at heart.
At Weber Shandwick, Shepard has implemented weekly "Power Hours," in which he invites agency account teams to present hard-to-tackle challenges that require fresh approaches. In addition, Shepard’s weekly "White Board" sessions offer crash courses for agency employees to learn new skills, ranging from online media buying to the key tenets of image creation. Thus, Shepard has used his knowledge and skills to transform the agency into a classroom.
In the past year, Shepard has been committed to applying his creativity, unique worldview and years of experience to raise the caliber of PR training, particularly within the university and corporate setting. His goal is to spread creativity and new skills to the rest of the firm so that one day his job will be obsolete. —Jamar Hudson
Honorable Mentions
Jessica Shearer, Vice President, Director of Marketing, MWW
Kelli Stauning, Internal Communications Director, WellPoint