Mary Zalla is Landor Associates global president of consumer brands. In this role, she focuses on developing Landor’s consumer branding offer, interacts with key consumer branding clients, and works to expand and enhance Landor’s capabilities in this space. Mary is also managing director of the Cincinnati and Chicago offices. She brings over 25 years of practice and study in design, brand strategy, innovation, creativity, and organizational leadership. Mary has held a number of important positions at Landor, serving most recently as chief executive officer and president.

As CEO, Mary helped reinvigorate the core essence of Landor in three key ways. First, she led the development of a new internal vision and values, ensuring that all employees had the opportunity to contribute to this effort in a meaningful way. Second, Mary led the effort to raise the creative standard across the entire Landor network through various programs that she helped develop and launch, including Landor Creative Champions and the Walter Awards. Mary also advocated a renewed focus on external award competitions. Under her leadership, Landor won its first two Gold Lion at the last two Cannes International Festival of Creativity, and increased the company’s overall external award wins more than 20 percent year over year during her tenure as CEO. Third, Mary initiated Landor’s optimized strategic process and go-to-market approach in 2013, which is already paying dividends for Landor’s clients.

Before serving as president and CEO, as managing director, Mary led the Cincinnati office as it grew to become Landor’s single largest office, the hub of two of Landor’s most important client relationships, and an office where emerging practice areas such as brand environments and new media have been developed.

If creativity is the engine, then inspiration is the fuel. I believe as an organization we owe our employees the type of environment, physically and culturally, that allows them to be as creative as they can be. Mary spends a lot of time thinking about the circumstances that allow great creativity to emerge and challenges herself and others to create those conditions.

Mary has authored articles on creativity and design research and presented at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, HOW Design Live, the Hub Brand Experience Symposium, and many others. Mary was the speaker at Northern Kentucky University’s Spring 2013 Commencement. She has been quoted in many industry and consumer publications. She sits on the board of the Cincinnati Museum Center, The City of Covington Marketing Advisory Board, the Point/Arc of Northern Kentucky, and is an active member of the Cincinnati Women’s Executive Forum.