Publicis Sapient, Publicis Groupe’s digital transformation business, has made two senior hires to its expanding global experience team under John Maeda.
Maeda, named global chief experience officer by chief executive Nigel Vaz last year, has hired Karin Giefer and Quinnton Harris for the respective roles of senior vice-president, experience, and global creative director, experience.
Giefer is credited as an expert in data and artificial intelligence, and previously held positions at McKinsey & Company in New York, at Frog Design as executive creative director and at Wieden & Kennedy in Portland and New York as director of business innovation.
Harris will also serve as Maeda’s chief of staff in order to maximise global exchanges across Publicis Sapient’s experience team. He joins from Blavity, the Los Angeles internet media company, and before that led design at Walker & Company, a consumer products and tech start-up .
Giefer and Harris become the third and fourth recruits made by Maeda, with all four having significant experience in Silicon Valley. User experience specialist Wendy Johansson, who spent six years at San Francisco consultancy WizeLine, was named group vice-president, experience transformation lead, while digital product design leader Leah Buley became group vice-president, experience research lead.
Sapient said the global experience team blends data, machine learning and creativity to craft customer-centric experiences that deliver value to advertisers and aid their digital transformation efforts. Maeda, meanwhile, is a world-renowned designer who was previously president at the Rhode Island School of Design and a professor at MIT Media Lab.
Maeda said: "The expertise brought by Karin and Quinnton will undoubtedly strengthen Publicis Sapient’s ability to help clients thrive in the fourth Industrial Revolution with access to their blended engineering and artistic talents.
"At Publicis Sapient, we ground ourselves in a creative and humanistic approach to technology and design in order to deliver the most dataful experiences. In an era when businesses are rapidly learning how to speak machine to be fully competitive, Publicis Sapient works to humanise technology in a world that is increasingly digital."
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