New Zealand

Kirsty Muddle

Chief Executive Officer, Practices & Products, Dentsu ANZ

With a focus on bringing modern creativity to life, Kirsty finds innovative ways to help clients grow their brand and form deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers. She leads a team of passionate people across creative, strategy, production, earned attention, digital experience, entertainment, public relations, content, social media, indigenous affairs, and government relations.

Kirsty started her career in Econometrics at a WPP agency in London and still maintains her love for the interplay between humans and data. She was one of the Founding Partners and CEO of cummins&partners before joining dentsu. Kirsty has been awarded Women of the Year and Executive of the Year twice, sits on the Board of the Australian council of Advertising (ACA) and Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA). She also appears on ABC’s Gruen.

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Paul Whittaker

Chief Commercial Officer, Merkle ANZ and Managing Director Merkle Australia

Paul Whittaker is the Chief Commercial Officer, Merkle ANZ and Managing Director Merkle Australia. Working across Merkle in both Australia and New Zealand, Paul is responsible for executing the Strategy and growth of the business, positioning Merkle ANZ as the leading CX experience transformation consultancy delivering people-centred technology solutions that are rooted in data, inspired by design and guided by strategy. In Paul’s role he sits on both the Merkle ANZ Executive Leadership Team and works across the broader Executive Team to translate strategy into action, ensuring short-term performance while also setting up the business to achieve longer-term financial results and business objectives.

Paul is a commercially focused and experienced leader with a proven track record of building high-performing teams. He believes business is about people; whether this be our colleagues or the customers we work for, or our partners, for whom we deliver outcomes. It is this that makes doing business real for Paul.

Paul has a varied background as a Management Consultant across a wide range of businesses and industries, working in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Paul ran the Salesforce practice at Merkle Aotearoa for approximately five years, establishing Merkle Aotearoa as the leading Salesforce Implementation Partner in New Zealand. Following this, Paul was the GM of Operations at Merkle Aotearoa, before stepping into the Executive Director Operations across both Merkle and dentsu Aotearoa. Paul’s most recent role prior to becoming the Chief Commercial Officer for Merkle ANZ was as the Managing Director of Merkle Aotearoa.

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Alice Hopkinson

Head of Salesforce Growth and Capability, Merkle Aotearoa

Coming soon

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Alice Hopkinson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-hopkinson-6038b5a9/

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Alister Lilley

Head of Architecture Southern and Commerce, Merkle Aotearoa

Coming soon

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Alister Lilley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisterlilley/

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Andrea Meredith

Chief Consulting & Delivery Officer ANZ

Andrea is Chief Consulting & Delivery Officer for Merkle across the ANZ region and is part of both the dentsu Aotearoa and Merkle ANZ Executive Leadership Teams.

Andrea’s role is focused on growing the Merkle brand as the leading customer experience company bringing a Total Experience transformation offering, through Experience Design, Operational Excellence, Data and superior Delivery Management across digital transformation, to the New Zealand market. Andrea believes that Total Experience transformation is the next iteration of business transformation, focused on people and their experience, whether that be internal or external.

Andrea leads a team of 30 across capabilities including Operational Excellence and Service Design, Change Management, Digital Strategy and Data Transformation, Data Architecture, BI & Analytics and UX design as well as senior roles across our Engagement and Agile delivery teams. She brings a 20-year background in management consulting, change management and delivery management not only through her time within Merkle but also through her time on large scale, multi-vendor, strategic programmes as a contractor direct to client. Andrea believes in building out those key relationships to become partnerships and has successfully done this across our Merkle clients. She believes a key factor to the success of the business is to ensure the team are enabled and armed with the right tools and support to put their best foot forward and exceed expectations.

Andrea has worked across several different industries including the energy sector, financial services, technology and the public sector, both local and central government. Much of that time has been with Merkle (previously Davanti) on and off across a 14-year period. Starting off as a senior programme manager and moving through various leadership roles before taking up the opportunity to lead the Merkle Aotearoa business in her current role. Over this time Andrea has built a wealth of knowledge and experience that has enabled the team to adapt easily to shifts in the market, pivoting client needs and being able to continuously improve best practice methodologies and ways of working to ensure the success of the client and success of the team.

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Andrea Meredith

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Angela Meads

Head of Southern Delivery, Merkle Aotearoa

Coming soon

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Angela Meads

https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-meads-05b88a1/

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Brad Riley

Chief Technology Officer, Merkle Aotearoa

Brad Riley is the Chief Technology Officer at Merkle Aotearoa and is part Merkle Aotearoa Leadership Team. In his role, Brad is responsible for directing and shaping the technology offering of Merkle Aotearoa to enable customers’ digital transformation initiatives.

Brad has guided Merkle Aotearoa’s digital portfolio to include Salesforce CRM, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Mulesoft, Adobe Magento, Amazon Connect and AWS Data Services. Brad believes that customer success and technology transformation is best delivered through strong, on-the-ground leadership, supported by visionary architects and well-architected solutions. He has an exceptional architecture background and is responsible for the growth and development of the Solution Architecture team to support our broader technology capabilities.

Brad has been part of the Merkle Aotearoa (formerly Davanti) team for 7 years, starting as Solution Architect and moving on to various leadership roles. With more than 23 years’ technology & consultancy experience working for leading global and local consultancies, Brad has applied his skills in New Zealand and the UK across numerous industries, including Banking/Insurance, Event Management, Government, Consulting, Engineering and Telecommunication. He is a Salesforce Certified Instructor and a Certified Technical Architect (CTA) – an elite group of architects of which there are only 450 worldwide. This broad experience provides Brad with a unique perspective and appreciation of how best to adopt new technologies across a wide range of industries and, coupled with his inquisitive nature, ensures our technology solutions empower your digital transformation.

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Brad Riley

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Gareth Reason

Practice Director, Merkle Aotearoa

Gareth Reason is the Practice Director of Merkle Aotearoa. Leading a team of more than 150 across Aotearoa, Gareth is responsible for driving the growth of the business and positioning Merkle Aotearoa as the leading CX transformation consultancy delivering people-centred technology solutions that are rooted in data, inspired by design and guided by strategy. In Gareth’s role he sits on both the dentsu Aotearoa and Merkle ANZ Leadership Teams.

Gareth is a commercially focused and experienced leader with a proven track record of building high-performing teams. He believes business is about people; he brings a strong focus to capability enablement and the growth and development of the team to stay close to Merkle’s customers’ needs and stay ahead of ever-evolving technology transformation trends and requirements.

Gareth has been part of the Merkle (formerly Davanti) team for 13 years, starting as Project Director and moving on to various leadership roles spanning Engagement, Delivery and Digital Transformation. With more than 25 years’ consultancy experience working for leading global and local consultancies, Gareth has worked in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and the USA across numerous industries, including Telecommunications/Media, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Banking/Insurance, Government, Consulting, Engineering and Legal Services. This breadth of experience gives Gareth a deep appreciation of the best practices and technology being adopted across a wide range of industries and a passion for helping our customers get closer to their customers.

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Gareth Reason

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-reason-b6807aa8/

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