Nadine Lafond and the case for a little applause

Nadine Lafond remembers clapping when a good idea arrived. She remembers dancing in the boardroom, too. Early in her career, these were apparently matters requiring correction. The advice she received was to be more restrained, less enthusiastic, a little more like the accepted image of a leader. A promising idea could have applause, presumably, once someone had established the appropriate approval process.

She returned to that memory in a reflection for International Women’s Day, alongside a photograph of herself at ten. The child in the picture had not yet learned that being a girl might be treated as a limitation. The adult, after a quarter-century in advertising and agency leadership, was reconsidering what she had been asked to surrender along the way.

The episode offers a useful entrance to Lafond’s story. In December 2025, she became chief executive of Imre. The title came after years of senior responsibility. Her description of the job, however, has more room for uncertainty than a promotion announcement usually allows. She is still learning. She still gets excited. The applause survived.

An education in the client’s chair

Her career began in consumer advertising at FCB, followed by a role helping build the early momentum of TANK Worldwide. She later moved into Ogilvy’s Canadian operation, reshaping its business around American and global clients. After relocating to the United States, she led the US advertising business as chief client officer. The geography widened alongside the responsibility.

That progression matters because an agency executive can come to the top through several doors. Lafond’s route ran through clients, teams and the work of keeping the two connected. In February 2024, she added a North American client engagement role while remaining president of the Canadian business. The appointment put relationships across a larger territory within her remit.

An account relationship is an everyday test of whether an organization can keep its promises. An idea has to survive the trip from conversation to finished work. Someone has to understand what the client needs, what the team can deliver and where those two accounts of reality have drifted apart. Lafond’s career puts that practical problem near the center of her leadership story.

Eleven years, and a wardrobe in red

When she left Ogilvy, Lafond counted eleven years there. Her farewell dwelt on teams, mentors, difficult moments and shared celebrations. She remembered late nights, including occasions spent sitting on the floor. There was also the matter of red: she had worn the agency’s signature color proudly enough to attract a little teasing.

The floor is a revealing detail in an executive farewell. A job title gives a tidy outline of a career; a late night on the floor gives it a body. Her recollection locates the experience among other people, in the awkward, ordinary circumstances through which work actually gets finished. The red supplies something else: affection for an institution expressed through a wardrobe.

Leaving a long-held role also means leaving a familiar version of oneself. The colleagues, the rituals and even the jokes about clothes belong to a shared history. Lafond thanked a long list of people and kept her next destination briefly under wraps. Her message held the sadness and anticipation of departure together, without pretending that eleven years could be reduced to a neat list of wins.

A new desk on December 1

Imre made her appointment effective December 1, 2025, and announced it a week later. She took responsibility for an agency with offices in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Her brief included growth, innovation and a more integrated way of serving clients. She arrived with a particular interest in changing how agencies create value.

The agency’s executive chair, Becky Chidester, emphasized the ability to mobilize services and respond to clients. Chief creative officer Christian Bauman pointed to her effect on ideas and teams. Those are different views of the same appointment: the business must move, and people must be able to make something worth moving.

The interesting question in such a brief is where change begins. A new CEO can alter a chart, rename a department or announce an ambition. The less photogenic work comes afterward: deciding who needs to speak to whom, which promises are realistic and which old habits deserve another hearing. Lafond’s focus on the agency model gives her appointment an operational problem to solve, alongside a title to occupy.

The chainsaw test

In her first weeks at Imre, a piece of work for STIHL caught her attention. The agency’s STIHL Inked social campaign subsequently received a Platinum AVA Digital Award in 2026. Lafond described seeing the case as a turning point, a moment when pride in her new role became attached to a particular piece of work.

She wrote to the team immediately. Her later account acknowledged that the original note included some more expressive language than she chose to reproduce publicly. It is an appealingly imperfect detail. Corporate congratulations often sound as though they have been laundered several times before anyone is allowed to wear them. This reaction retained a little of its original heat.

The work was the team’s; the excitement was hers. That distinction is central to the episode. A newly arrived executive had found something already made that she wanted to celebrate. The pleasure came from recognizing the talent she had joined. In a career story full of changing roles, this is a small moment of arrival: an agency name becomes a group of people whose work makes you want to send a message.

The title she had to learn again

Lafond’s reflection on her first six months as CEO began with a surprise. Nearly a decade in president and senior executive roles had led her to expect some continuity. She had already been involved in strategy, operations, culture, talent and growth. Becoming CEO seemed likely to extend work she knew.

She acknowledged that her expectations had been incomplete. Her account then turned to the responsibility of connecting an organization’s parts: reading the market, listening to clients, supporting employees and protecting what gives a business its character. She described moving repeatedly between the world outside the agency and the people inside it.

She also acknowledged the coexistence of confidence and doubt. Some days brought conviction; others brought a replay of conversations and decisions. That admission gives the role a texture absent from most executive biographies. Authority does not make every choice feel settled. Being responsible for a decision may mean carrying it home in your head.

Her emphasis on colleagues with perspectives she lacks makes the reflection more than a confession. The job requires other minds. A CEO who recognizes that dependence has a reason to listen beyond courtesy. The organization contains information and judgment that no single person, however experienced, can hold alone.

“I thought I understood the role. I didn’t.”Nadine Lafond, on becoming CEO

Who gets to decide?

By August 2026, Lafond was writing about the friction between faster production and slower decisions. Artificial intelligence could accelerate research, analysis and content development, she argued, while the organization around that work continued to take too long to agree on what happened next.

Her proposal concerned authority. An organization needs access to expertise, but it also needs clarity about who owns a decision. She advocated a smaller group with explicit responsibility to act, surrounded by the expertise needed to make sound choices. The argument belongs to the practical side of her leadership: speed depends on the arrangement of people as well as the availability of tools.

There is a familiar office comedy hidden inside that problem. A document travels quickly; its permission to proceed travels at the pace of everyone’s calendar. Adding a faster drafting tool leaves the calendar quite unimpressed. The distinction is useful because it makes the question concrete: once work is ready, whose judgment allows it to move?

In a July essay, she had already argued for shorter cycles between insight and action, with continuing feedback rather than treating launch as the end of learning. Read together, the two pieces outline an ambition to make organizations more responsive. The premise is demanding: a team must be willing to revise its assumptions after the work meets the world.

Making room, then asking for more

The leadership team was changing as well. Imre announced Fred Hickman III’s appointment to lead Account Services in March 2026. Paulina De la Riva became chief strategy officer in April. The latter appointment added a leader whose experience connects creative work, brand strategy and digital marketing.

De la Riva had also appeared among the colleagues responding to Lafond’s Ogilvy farewell. She credited Lafond with believing in her and challenging her. That pairing gives a specific human example of an otherwise abstract leadership ideal. Encouragement and expectation can belong in the same relationship. Support can make an ambitious request possible.

In May, Lafond was named a PM360 ELITE 2026 Transformational Leader. The recognition emphasized people development, accountability and hands-on involvement. An award supplies a date in a career; the colleague’s recollection supplies a relationship. Together they point toward the part of agency leadership that remains difficult to display on an organizational chart: the effect one person has on another person’s willingness to try.

A team assembled around strategy, creativity and client service will still have to disagree. The usefulness of those different roles depends partly on whether their perspectives can reach the room. The leadership problem is to give those differences a productive place in the work, then make a decision that someone can carry out.

Permission to keep the applause

Return to the ten-year-old photograph. Lafond’s reflection reaches back to a version of herself that did not yet consider enthusiasm a professional liability. Her adult assessment is more measured than a simple declaration of fearlessness. She says she does not get everything right, and she recognizes the women who made room for a wider range of leadership styles.

The story invites a question about how credibility gets assigned. If visible excitement once counted against a woman’s authority, what useful information did a workplace miss by asking her to conceal it? A reaction to an idea can tell colleagues that someone is paying attention. A celebration can tell them that effort has been seen. There is no guarantee of good leadership in either gesture, but there is no automatic disqualification, either.

Lafond now leads a business while arguing for clearer decisions and more room for people to contribute. Her public reflections keep returning to learning, adjustment and the talent around her. That makes her enthusiasm part of an ongoing practice rather than a decorative trait attached to a biography.

The next decision will still require judgment. The next project will still need to be delivered. A CEO’s doubts will not disappear because a team has had a good day. But when an idea deserves a little applause, Lafond’s story suggests that the meeting can survive it. The work might even benefit.