At Leo, Jessica Brackstone has forged her own path, aided by her obsession with advertising history, something which has led her to be regarded as the most curious staffer in Leo’s offices.
As a senior strategist, she’s led and supported successful pitches across the agency over the past 12 months. She has also contributed sharp research, strategic rigour, comms planning, creative inspiration and, most notably, played a pivotal role in shaping the next iteration of Suncorp’s ‘Resilience’ platform, helping define the business’s direction for the next three years.
This marked a major milestone in her career and shows younger women in the industry that you don’t have to wait to become a senior leader to drive real impact.
For all of these reasons, and so many more, she was awarded the Rising Star Award at B&T’s Women In Media Awards, presented by Are Media. Catching up with B&T after the win, Brackstone said she was truly “overwhelmed”.
“I can’t honestly put it into words, because I was so surprised to win. I was genuinely amazed by the calibre of talent that was out there, and so I didn’t really even prepare a speech.
“I’m extremely flattered and incredibly honoured to win. I want to say a huge shout-out to publicists who have been so supportive of me and all my weird ideas. I’m so grateful,” she said.
After navigating plenty of setbacks and even more successes over the past year, Brackstone is fired up to push even further in the years ahead. Beyond leading key learning and development projects for junior to mid-weight employees, she’s climbed the ranks so quickly that she is staring down the barrel of a promotion to strategy director.
Brackstone is the definition of a ‘Rising Star’ and an industry leader of tomorrow.
