Meet The B&T 30 Under 30 Sales/Account Manager Finalists!

In these strange plague times, B&T is more determined than ever to unite the industry and revel in the glory of our industry’s best and brightest overachievers.

That’s why over the next few weeks we’ll be celebrating adland’s youngest and most talented individuals; that’s right, B&T‘s 30 Under 30 finalists.

There are 10 finalists in each category, and 10 categories overall. So, if you’re keen to see who made the ultimate list this year, now’s your chance. Let these individuals inspire you, make you seethe with jealousy and ultimately motivate you to do the best work you can, and enter the Awards in 2021.

Without further ado, here are the 10 Sales/Account Manager finalists.

Alicia Doessel, Nine

Alicia’s career began six years ago in Brisbane when she secured a job as a Digital Sales Coordinator at Mi9, where she was soon promoted to an Account Executive. In this time, she was nominated as the Media-i QLD Digital Sales Person of the Year 2015 – the first time Mi9 had an Account Executive listed in Media-i. She was also part of the winning Sales Team of the Year. Five months later she accepted a promotion to Sales Executive, based in Sydney.

Within the year, she was recognised by her clients in winning Media-i NSW Digital Sales Person of the Year 2016. Since then, she has worked across several client groups where she has delivered growth for Nine Digital; progressing to Senior Sales Executive, and in 2018 she was the youngest person in Nine Digital’s history to become a Group Business Manager.

Most recently Alicia was one of 16 women selected to take part in Nine’s leadership program, Women Leading at Nine, alongside female leaders across the country – some of whom are ten years plus Alicia’s senior. Alicia is also part of the team leading a project with UnLTd to integrate Nine’s charity partners into Nine’s sales culture.

Dan Beer, Publicis Groupe

In five years, Dan has had five roles, nine client groups, eight pitch team wins and hundreds of lessons learned. In that time, he also completed university whilst working full time and gained four promotions in the process – the most recent of which being an integrated role on Publicis Groupe’s bespoke Power of One model designed to service the Campbell’s Arnott’s global account.

Dans says working with two Chief Client Officers and the Chief Growth Officer for Publicis Groupe has been a deeply rewarding experience. He notes his most rewarding career highlight as being when he was handpicked 18-months ago as ‘high potential talent’ to represent the Publicis Groupe on its Next Generation Board by the Groupe & Brand leadership teams.

Elena Fullerton, L&A Social Media

Elena joined the L&A team 9 years ago, working her way up from an intern to a Business Director, assisting the company to grow from 15 clients to over 60 clients today.

Throughout her career she has served as an Account Manager, Account Director, and finally Business Director today.  Some key accomplishments throughout the years for Elena include signing on key partners including Stuart Alexander, William Grant & Sons, Volkswagen & Caltex and helping hundreds of global brands find their communities through social media.

Today Elena’s role sees her heading up the strategic growth of L&A, focusing on the trends, relevancy & opportunity strong social strategy delivers to clients and consumers alike.

Hannah Udina, Worldpay

Hanna’s career path hasn’t been conventional. After finishing a law degree, she had all intentions to become a human rights lawyer, however, it was a competitive market, so she went into the next best thing – corporate law specializing in finance and banking. This path did not fit her personality, so she exited the legal world.

She then began at Optus Business where she managed their Transaction Services Platform. Due to high performance, she was sent to Singtel where she was part of a team that launched their Future Now innovation Centre, which showcased emerging technologies. ‘During her time working with the Singtel Group, she was exposed to a range of new and upcoming payment technologies and platforms. She took this curiosity and passion back to Australia to work on various payment projects. This led her to her current job where she is the Global Strategic Partnership lead for Asia Pacific where she is in charge of growing the global partnerships within APAC.

Linh Diep, GrowthOps

Linh knew she had to stand out to get in front of industry leaders, so she began a university club for marketing and advertising students (UQMAS) to get in front of agencies. From this, she secured an internship and went on to be an Account Executive at Publicis before she finished her degree.

Her initiative led to board and committee positions with the Australian Marketing Institute, the UQ Young Alumni Board, Interactive Minds Advisory Board and Youngbloods’ QLD & National Committee. Now three years into advertising, she’s been promoted to Junior Account Director. 

A self-diagnosed woman she is heavily involved in the industry, not just in her home state in Queensland, but across Australia. She founded the Assisterhood – a mentorship program for Brisbane’s rising talent and is the National Co-chair for Youngbloods, delivering 20+ events, across 4 states reaching 3,000+ young people nationally, taking over the AdNews cover for Mental Health month & battled it out on Gruen. 

Katie Lancaster, News Corp Australia

Katie has had a successful career at News Corp. Last year, she was recognised with the most significant digital award at News Corp Australia and was awarded the top sales influencer for the year. She was able to drive results with a dedicated spirit, innovative thinking to solve real client challenges, and collaboration and high performance sales development programs.

She’s since received a promotion as Group Digital Manager for Key Accounts and has the responsibility across a client base including Westpac, Foxtel, REA, and Flight Centre. She has always strived to exceed expectations and deliver strong results for clients. Having learned how to navigate and grow a career in digital, she sought out a position on the ‘Women in Tech committee’, which empowers women in the workplace, industry, and in universities to explore careers in technology and create opportunities for personal development.

Loesje Lambooy, REA GROUP

Loesje learned to fail fast and recover even faster through being involved in some of Australia’s most prestigious events such as InStyle’s Women of Style and prix de Marie Claire. As rag sales slowed, she then joined Bohemia Agency. Her skills in PR pitching were swiftly traded in for excel shortcuts and rate negotiations.

After two years of hard work in agency land, in 2015 she was offered an incredible opportunity to join REA Group as an Account Manager. In the last four years, she has enjoyed multiple nominations in Media i’s Digital Sales Person of the Year Award (2017 & 2018), scooped up Universal McCann’s Representative of the Quarter (Q4 FY17), UM Sales Team of the Year (2017), REA’s Global Sales Incentive Trip to South Africa (2018) and Media i’s 1st ranked digital sales team (2019 & 2020).

Rosie Brennan, SomeOne Sydney

After graduation, Rosie got her first opportunity with London’s maverick design agency Williams Murray Hamm. Over 3 years she managed some of the agency’s biggest clients including Carlsberg, Morrisons and Castrol.

From here, she moved to The Agency of SomeOne where she led the global strategic relaunch of Merlin’s Madame Tussauds and SEALIFE making them the agency’s biggest clients to date. In 2018, the founding partners of SomeOne in London offered her the chance to build and manage the Sydney agency as Managing Partner. In 18 months, the agency has won 12 big, household name clients such as Cancer Council, Hisense, Torrens University, HSBC and AMP and continues to grow throughout 2020.

Sandy Rogers, SCA

Sandy’s SCA career started over nine years ago after a cricket incident which saw him on the sidelines taking on extra media commitments. Featuring weekly on a sports segment radio station, he found his love for radio.

Over time he realised his purpose was to help businesses and people grow – which led him to take an Agency Account Manager role at SCA Sydney in 2015. Since then, he’s exceeded budget every year, was one of four finalists in 2019 Australian Commercial Radio Awards for Best National Agency Salesperson, 2019 winner of Media I NSW Radio Salesperson of The Year, and promoted to Group Sales Manager (GSM).   

Suzi Williamson, Taboo

Suzi fell into advertising after planning to do journalism. She was selected by Leo Burnett from 200+ applications to the Communications Council Graduate Program. She rose through the ranks over 4 years at Leo’s working across huge national brands like BONDS, Peters Ice Cream, Jay Jays and Make-A-Wish.

She was then headhunted to progressive experience-led agency, Taboo, working across TAC, Telstra, SÜK Workwear, H&M, MECCA, WorkSafe and more. Some of her key achievements include account managing the research, creative refinement, digital development, school pilot program and launch of a tool to help end online bullying – reword.

She also attended Cannes Lions in 2016 to see this passion project recognized by the industry, and her projects have won awards across every major awards show including B&T, Webby Awards, One Show, ADFEST, WARC, Epica, IPA and Clio. In particular, reword was awarded 5 Effies and 11 Lions (2 gold in each), and 13 Spikes including Grand Prix for Good.

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