• by Amy Corr  @MediaPostOTL, August 12, 2016

R/GA hired Nicky Bell to lead its Los Angeles office and Jonathan Woytek as executive creative director for R/GA Austin. As senior vice president, managing director of R/GA Los Angeles, Bell will be responsible for expanding the agency's west coast office and lead the launch of new office capabilities. She will report to Sean Lyons, president, US, R/GA. Bell spent the first 18 years of her career at Ogilvy & Mather, seven in Sydney, then 11 in New York, where she rose to senior partner, worldwide managing director, running global teams on Dove, Kodak, Motorola and Avon. She was most recently CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, where she led the team to win ASB bank, Sanitarium, Coca-Cola, Air New Zealand and the New Zealand governments' Commission for Financial Capability accounts. "Nicky is a proven leader. She's transformed cultures, refocused and realigned agency capabilities, and contributed to significant growth of client businesses," said Lyons. "R/GA has big plans for its Los Angeles office and Nicky is exactly the right person to deliver on them."

In addition to Bell, Jonathan Woytek joined R/GA as executive creative director for the Austin office. He will report to Chloe Gottlieb and Taras Wayner, both serving as executive vice president, executive creative directors, U.S. Prior to R/GA, Woytek was executive creative director at Periera & O'Dell. While there, he created work for clients such as Skype, LEGO, Hyatt, Godiva and Corona. Prior to joining Pereira & O'Dell, he spent 3 years as senior vice president, director of user experience for McCann/MRM San Francisco. Between 2000-2007 he worked at Razorfish and Publicis, working on clients including Adidas, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Mattel, Oracle, Red Bull, Samsung, Sony and Visa. "We are thrilled to welcome Jonathan's creative genius and masterful knowledge of UX to our creative team here at R/GA," said Wayner.