Bailey Lauerman has appointed Lauren Schuster to serve as head of business development, based out of the agency's Omaha office. She will lead client growth at both the Nebraska location as well as at the agency's Los Angeles office. She previously worked at GlynnDevins and spent over 11 years at VML including time as director of business development and working on brands like Gatorade and Colgate Palmolive. 

Ad agency Johannes Leonardo has appointed Hope Nardini creative director. She will focus on the MassMutual account alongside creative director Kevin Watkins and will report to co-founders Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico at the agency’s headquarters in New York.  Nardini joins the agency from McCann New York where she was responsible for the Verizon account among others. Last year, Nardini’s team created Verizon’s emotional “First Responders” Super Bowl spot.   Earlier Nardini served at agencies Leo Burnett and BBDO in Chicago.  The hire follows the recent appointment of Samira Ansari as JL’s new group creative director from Grey New York.

Los Angeles-based digital agency Zehner is expanding its leadership team with the promotion of Sukh Sidhu to vice president, business development & strategic alliances, and Masha Agapov to the role of creative director. Separately, Tino Doan, previously with Outerknown has joined the agency as director of commerce strategy. And consultant Edwin Chang signs on as an advisor to provide insight into multichannel operations.   

RAPP UK is appointing Katie Carruthers as creative director and Anthea Goodrick as associate creative director to help lead the creative output across the agency. Both have contracts to complement their life/work balance following the agency's commitment to a UK government-backed return to work program called Creative Equals. The organization offers programs designed to help creatives return to work after starting a family. The duo will work across RAPP’s client base, including PayPal, Virgin Media and and Nestlé. 

Cutwater has appointed Lizzy Ryan as media director to help oversee the agency's growing roster of clients which now includes Axos Bank, Unison, OneLogin, JUST, MDsave and Smitten Ice Cream, all added in the past year. She most recently served in the same titled position at DigitasLBI where she led the Pandora media team to deliver mobile-focused media solutions.  

iProspect is appointing Doug O'Reilly as senior vice president, head of data and insights, a newly-created role to bolster the agency’s data and insights capabilities. He will report directly to Mike Gullaksen, president, iProspect U.S.O'Reilly previously worked at MRM//McCann, where he served as SVP, director of data science, and led the development and growth of the data strategy group.     

Performance marketing agency Fluent has appointed Alex Mandel as chief financial officer reporting to CEO Ryan Schulke.   Mandel had been working as a financial consultant with the company since last July. Earlier he served as CFO at IAC Applications, part of IAC/InteractiveCorp. He also previously served as CFO at LendingTree. "Over the past seven months, Alex has helped to fortify our finance, accounting and overall public company infrastructure, as Fluent has continued to establish itself as a stand-alone public company.  In addition, he has begun to play a meaningful role in helping to shape our corporate strategy as we scale …

Marketing agency AKA NYC has appointed Steve Grimes chief digital officer to oversee the shop’s digital output and drive the agency’s innovation and excellence in the digital space.  Grimes has over two decades of experience in the digital media industry, including stints Getty Images, Comedy Central and the National Basketball Association. He won two Emmy awards during his time at Comedy Central for his work on “The Daily Show” and the “Night of Too Many Stars” event.  As CDO, Grimes will join AKA NYC’s senior executive team under managing partners Elizabeth Furze and Scott Moore.

Chris Seda is departing 360i to join the FCB Health Network as senior vice president and director of product design. In his newly created role, Seda will build and lead the Network’s new digital product design practice, including web, mobile, apps, voice and experiential product design.