Though the nature of media and communications changes drastically every day, Andrew Swinand has proven his ability to stay five steps ahead of the competition on behalf of marketers – inventing new solutions for the industry by reinventing his role within the advertising media business. These days, as newly named president of global operations for worldwide media agency network Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), he applies his passion for innovation across continents, product categories and cultures – creating unprecedented service and results by reexamining the question of what an agency can and should do for its clients and for consumers.

Swinand’s SMG role – adopted in August 2008 – entails a focus on building stronger connection infrastructures that continue to advance the company’s presence within critical growth markets across the globe. As such, he helps steer global operations forward by fortifying a more powerful presence amongst the agency’s clients and internal teams, and leverages his team-building and client service talents toward strategically unifying the global organization. Specifically, Swinand works with the network’s regional CEOs across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Europe/Middle East/Africa to fortify SMG offerings and strengthen its client proposition, leveraging assets and building on the strong momentum of these regions.

Along with regional management responsibilities, his role includes the creation of new client-facing service models across the network and the expansion of its successful technology practice. Further, he is charged with working alongside SMG Global CEO Laura Desmond to align and position the network to take advantage of the digital resources that the Publicis Groupe media brands now have access to as part of the recently launched VivaKi operating model – including its Talent Operation and digital Nerve Center resources.

Most recently, Swinand was at Denuo, the media futures consultancy within Publicis Groupe. Prior to his role at Denuo, he was a president at Starcom Worldwide, where he helped secure the Samsung business as well as build a global technology practice. He was also responsible for developing proprietary accountability metrics to measure Return-on-Objective (ROO) across all client investments, supported by Starcom’s extensive media research team, and he pioneered the service models Starcom delivers to Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Swinand will continue to oversee the Nintendo business across Starcom Worldwide and Leo Burnett.

Swinand began his professional career as an account supervisor at BBDO in Los Angeles, then served as a brand manager for P&G’s beauty care group, and later became a marketing director for reflect.com. Andrew proudly served his country as a platoon leader in the U.S. Army, after receiving his degree from the Wharton School of Business. While in the Army, he earned the 5th Corps Leadership Award, National Defense Medal, Army Commendation Medal and two Army Achievement Awards for his leadership and service as a platoon leader in Germany.

Regarded as an innovative leader by the industry at large, Swinand has been recognized by Advertising Age as a Media Maven, Mediaweek magazine as one of the Industry’s “Power 50” and Media Magazine’s “Rising Star”, inter national ist magazine as Global Marketing Innovator, appeared on the Crain’s Chicago Business 40 under 40 list, and was also awarded the Chicago Magazine Association’s prestigious Harmon Award for excellence in print. He also continues to be dynamic in interactive marketing, having served as a judge for ad:tech as well as serving on the advisory boards of various companies.

Swinand and his wife Laura currently live in Evanston, Illinois where they both spend a significant amount of time chasing their twins, Tanner and Georgia.