Facebook continues to grow its Creative Shop with the announcement of four senior hires for Australia and New Zealand.

Andy Simpson (pictured above, far left) joins Facebook’s ANZ team as Creative Shop lead, and is joined by two creative strategists – Karen O’Leary (pictured above, third from the left) and Dan Walton (pictured above, perched at the back) – as well as Lara Andrews (pictured below), who has been appointed to the newly-created role of creative research lead.

Simpson joins Facebook with a strategic marketing background, having held roles in brand management at Unilever and global gaming developer Ubisoft.

He will lead Facebook’s local team of five senior creatives, including O’Leary and Walton.

Prior to joining Facebook, O’Leary was the creative director at TBWA Auckland, has garnered an impressive back catalogue of activities, including judging at D&AD to launching, managing and merging her own social/PR/activations agency.

Walton joins Facebook with over 15 years of global industry experience. Having started his career as an art director at McCann Erickson in New Zealand, he has had roles as an art director in the UK, Kenya, Tanzania and more recently, Sydney.

Walton was most recently the group creative strategist at Clemenger BBDO.

Having spent the past three years at Facebook, Andrews will be focused on increasing the data insights available to its Creative Shop team both in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region in her role as creative research lead.

Established in 2011, Creative Shop is a team of creative strategists within Facebook and Instagram designed to support Australian and New Zealand brands, businesses and agencies to build the most creative and innovative work on the platform.

Currently, there over 150 people working in the Creative Shop division across more than 40 locations.