• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, August 23, 2013

Ad shop gyro, has appointed agency and brand consulting veteran Patrick O’Hara as its first Chief Strategy Officer. O’Hara started the new job this week and is based out of the agency’s New York office.

In addition to serving as top strategist at gyro O’Hara will also play a “pivotal role” in new business activity according to the agency.

For the last two-and-a-half years O’Hara has focused on the branding side of the business working with clients at his own brand consultancy Table Consulting. During the same time he served as a “collaborator” with Co: Collective, the brand consultancy established three years ago by former JWT creative executives Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan.

Christoph Becker, global CEO and CCO at gyro cited O’Hara’s record as a “proven innovator and curator of new technologies. His extensive strategic experience makes him an ideal fit to drive gyro’s global B-to-B thought leadership.”

Prior to setting up Table, O’Hara was a founding partner at Prospero Consulting for 11 years beginning in 1999. Earlier he was a planner at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners and before that was a planner at Anderson & Lembke.

He has worked across a wide range of brands, including American Express, Armani Exchange, Charles Schwab, Credit Suisse, Netscape, Pearle Vision, SAP, Starwood Hotels and Unisys.

A native of the UK, O’Hara began his career as a diamond dealer with Backes & Strauss, according to his LinkedIn Page, where he describes the experience this way: “Spent four years with loupe and tweezers in Antwerp and looked at over a million stones. ‘Pinged’ more than a few. Learned Dutch and an appreciation for the Flemish Old Masters.”