Global CEO / Momentum Worldwide
Donnalyn Smith
She joined Momentum Worldwide in 1995 and never left. In 2022 she took the top job - and set out to reinvent what a brand experience can be.
She joined Momentum Worldwide in 1995 and never left. In 2022 she took the top job - and set out to reinvent what a brand experience can be.
Donnalyn Smith runs Momentum Worldwide, the experiential and brand-experience agency inside the Interpublic Group, from its offices at 300 Vesey Street in New York. Her job is to figure out how brands reach people in a moment when attention is scarce and the tools for earning it keep changing. Her answer, honed over decades, is consistent: stop interrupting people and start building things they want to be part of.
She was named Global CEO in November 2022, stepping up from President of North America. The timing was deliberate. Momentum had just been named Adweek's Experiential Agency of the Year, and the industry was rethinking what marketing could be as commerce, technology and consumer expectations all shifted at once. Smith framed the promotion less as a reward and more as a mandate to keep evolving the agency's model.
What sets her apart from most agency chiefs is the length of the runway behind her. Smith joined Momentum in 1995 and has spent her entire executive career there, moving through Group Account Director, Managing Director, Regional Director and EVP roles on some of the agency's largest accounts before running North America and then the world. In an industry where people change shops every few years, a 27-year tenure at one company is close to unheard of.
That continuity shows up in how she leads. Long before the CEO title, Smith was building the internal machinery of the agency - support systems for working parents, talent-development programs, and a push to widen who gets a seat at the table. She treats the workplace itself as the product's first draft. If the room making the work is narrow, she argues, the work will be too.
Her public voice matches that conviction. Smith is a founding member of #TimesUpAdvertising, the industry arm of the broader Time's Up movement, and she has written for Adweek on why real diversity in advertising takes sustained effort rather than a single announcement. In 2018 she was named a She Runs It "Trailblazer Mom of the Year" and included on Adweek's Disruptors list - recognition earned while doing the day job, not instead of it.
A marketer's best work is only made possible through a diversity of talent applied to that company's business.
Company output won't be inclusive if your workplace isn't.
Diversifying requires repeated effort and can't be just a quick fix.
Our agency has grown in an era marked by rapid and profound shifts in communications, technology, commerce, and consumer expectation of brands and companies.
She is the Global CEO of Momentum Worldwide, an experiential and brand-experience agency within the Interpublic Group, a role she has held since November 2022.
She joined Momentum in 1995 and has spent her entire executive career at the agency, rising to Global CEO in 2022.
She served as President of North America, and earlier as EVP, Regional Director, Managing Director and Group Account Director on several of the agency's largest accounts.
She is a founding member of #TimesUpAdvertising, a She Runs It Trailblazer Mom of the Year, an Adweek Disruptor, and an advocate for diversity and support for working parents.
Momentum has been named Experiential Agency of the Year by Adweek and Campaign US, and Employer of the Year by Digiday, during her tenure.