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Dentsu Americas has named three senior leaders to its media practice, ADWEEK has learned.
Grant Ogburn joins as chief growth officer; Solange Claudio joins as chief operations officer; and Jason Kodish joins chief data and analytics officer.
The hires come weeks after ADWEEK reported that Sean Reardon will step down as CEO of Dentsu Americas Media. His departure prompted Dentsu to expand global media practice president Will Swayne’s remit to oversee the entire U.S. business—part of a broader effort to unify leadership across its agencies Carat, Dentsu X, and iProspect.
“We are focused on being a growth partner for our clients,” Swayne told ADWEEK. “Grant, Solange, and Jason will take on important roles in the Americas Media Practice, working alongside our three go-to market media agencies.”
Ogburn joins from IPG’s UM Worldwide, where he was global chief growth officer. There, he helped win clients including Geico, General Mills, and Levi’s. He will focus on making Dentsu’s services more competitive while building integrated solutions for clients, Swayne said.
Claudio was COO at Publicis agencies Zenith and Moxie. As chief operations officer, Swayne said she will “create the organization and environment for our talent to thrive and our clients to win in the algorithm era.”
And Kodish brings more than a decade of analytics leadership at Publicis. Most recently he was at CapGemini and Cognizant. In his new role, he will “lead an end-to-end analytics team that enables faster, better decisioning for our clients’ outcomes,” Swayne said.
Each leader will work across Dentsu Media’s agencies to integrate and build new capabilities.
All three leaders told ADWEEK that Dentsu’s culture, clarity, and focus on growth motivated them to join.
“Across the industry, we’ve seen what happens when complexity outpaces clarity,” Ogburn said. “Integration becomes a buzzword, culture gets buried under process, and talent—no matter how capable—struggles to do their best work,” he said, adding Dentsu offered the chance to “be part of something more intentional.”
Kodish called Dentsu an “absolute giant-in-waiting.”
“When we win, we win together with our clients,” Claudio added. “This mentality was key in my decision to join Dentsu.”
The appointments follow recent client wins at Dentsu Media, including Solo Stove, eBay, Zaxby’s, and Dollar General.
