Stardust hired Sean Starkweather as creative director.

WPP-owned global brand strategy and design agency, Brand Union, tapped John Shaw as worldwide head of strategy and planning, a new position at the agency. Shaw will report into Simon Bolton, worldwide CEO of Brand Union. He will also be responsible for leading the London strategy and planning department, reporting to Catherine Gale, Brand Union's UK and Ireland CEO. Shaw joins the agency from WPP Team Red where he served as chief strategy officer. Prior to that, he worked at Wieden + Kennedy, where he became planning director overseeing work on Coca-Cola, Nike and Microsoft. Additionally, he held the position …

GSD&M welcomes back Brad Nadal, who has returned to the agency after spending ten years at MillerCoors. In his new role of account director, Nadal will handle the agency's Walgreens business, including beauty, health and wellness, private brand and seasonal. "Brad has a proven track record of excellent account leadership experience and growing brands in the retail space, and his energy is a perfect fit with our culture. We're thrilled to welcome him back," said Nancy Ryan, senior vice president/managing director at GSD&M. While at MillerCoors, Nadal served as the marketing director of the Pacific region and helped to drive …

Christopher Kief was named chief technology officer at Saatchi & Saatchi New York. He was most recently executive technology director at TBWA Worldwide and chief technology officer of Pilot.is, a design and technology unit within TBWA Worldwide. Kief is charged with accelerating Saatchi & Saatchi's application of technology to its creative product. He will partner with Saatchi & Saatchi's chief creative officer, Jay Benjamin and chief production officer, Tanya LeSieur. While CTO of TBWA's Pilot.is, Kief led development of Spotlit.es, a content distribution system, and Projeqt.com, a dynamic presentation tool. Prior to TBWA, he served as director of creative technology …

GroupM China promoted Tony Chen to the newly created role of chief digital officer, China/Taiwan, a newly created position. Most recently, Chen was president of GroupM Interaction, China. In his new role, Chen will lead all agency digital teams and GroupM special units to drive the GroupM China digital agenda. He will also lead the group's real-time programmatic buying strategy and implementation. Prior to joining GroupM China, Chen was general manager for Dell Consumer Direct business in Greater China. Before that, he was COO of RealNetworks China and vice president of marketing for eBay China.

SapientNitro named KV Sridhar as chief creative officer for India. Sridhar, popularly known as "Pops," will be based out of Mumbai and serve as a member of the global executive creative team, working alongside Rajdeep Endow, managing director of Sapient India. "Marketers now think differently about brand-consumer engagement and recognize the critical need for strategy, creative and technology to blend together, to move from just creating ads to creating worlds, or as SapientNitro refers to it, Storyscaping," said KV Sridhar. "The canvas has changed in a way that can no longer be constrained in the traditional advertising model. I am …

MEC named Christophe Brossard as CEO of MEC France. Brossard will join the agency in early June. He joins MEC from Bestofmedia Group where he reorganized the European operations and played a key role in the merger with the American group TechMedia Network (now Purch) in June 2013. Brossard began his career as a TV buyer with Starcom and then moved on to spend more than 21 years with Omnicom Media Group, leading the launch of PHD in France where he worked with Pierre Conte, current CEO of GroupM France. "Our business continues to get more and more complex, and …

Adam Gerhart was tapped as Mindshare's West Coast office lead based in Los Angeles. In the role, Gerhart will drive the strategy and execution of the agency's services. He reports to Colin Kinsella, CEO of Mindshare North America. Gerhart's first undertaking is the office-wide implementation of Mindshare's operating system, THE LOOP, a proprietary system that serves consumer insights in real time that teams act on to "close the loop" of owned, earned and paid media. Teams leverage the system for daily optimization, campaigns, and live events. Gerhart joins Mindshare L.A. from Mindshare Worldwide, in London, where as managing partner he …

Deutsch New York has hired Rich van Steenburgh as senior vice president, director of data analytics. Van Steenburgh joined from Pfizer where he spent the last 11 years, most recently serving as director, global multi-channel reporting lead.

Neal Davies, most recently one of the co-founders of Naked Communications, will become president and CEO of Effie Worldwide. The organization's president and CEO, Mary Lee Keane will retire this summer, after 20 years of leadership.