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Colleen DeCourcy Appointed Executive Fellow

May 25, 2022
Headshot of Colleen DeCourcy in a blue turtleneck sweater

The Yale School of Management is pleased to announce that Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Creative Officer for Snap Inc., will be joining the Executive Fellows Program sponsored by the Yale Center for Customer Insights. DeCourcy will be the fifth Executive Fellow at Yale SOM, joining current and former senior leaders from IBM, Facebook (now Meta), Spotify, and Accenture. The Executive Fellows program helps bring the latest marketplace thinking into the Yale School of Management curriculum, connecting students and faculty with marketing leaders to link academic theory and industry practice.

Colleen’s appointment is effective immediately allowing her to be involved with the Yale SOM community as soon as possible. This fall, Colleen will be part of a series of intimate and informal weekly lunch sessions known as “Lunch in the C-Suite,” sponsored by the Yale Center for Customer Insights. She will also be a featured speaker at the Colloquium on Marketing Leadership series which highlights leading marketing and insights experts who give talks to Yale SOM students.

Prior to joining Snap Inc. earlier this year, Colleen spent nine years leading Wieden+Kennedy’s global network as President and CCO, where she helped lead the vision for the agency's future, tasked with protecting the legacy while redefining W+K’s creative offerings in an ever-changing media landscape. Under Colleen’s tenure, W+K was named Adweek’s Global Agency of the Year for an unprecedented three years in a row and amassed 149 Cannes Lions, a testament to her creative commitment in leadership. Colleen is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Lion of St. Mark award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for a lifetime of service to creativity in communications.

Colleen’s success has also helped create a path for a more inclusive and equitable industry. She is a trailblazer in the digital marketing realm, being named the first chief digital officer at TBWA as well as one of Fast Company magazine’s Most Creative People in Business, honored with the Fearless Voices award by the organization She Runs It.  In 2019, she was selected as the creative leader of the decade by AdWeek magazine.

As Yale SOM Executive Fellow Antonio Lucio, who once described Colleen in AdWeek as a modern-day Frank Capra who “believes in people and that behind us all there is goodness waiting to be unfolded,” recently said of Colleen’s appointment: “Colleen brings to Yale SOM students a wealth of experience as one of the world’s most successful and awarded creatives in the marketing and advertising world.” YCCI Faculty Director Ravi Dhar echoed these sentiments, noting that “As a creative, Colleen adds a wonderful new dimension to the Executive Fellows Program given her ability to enable change, not only within a single organization but also for the advertising industry at large. It is of great benefit to all of our students to learn from a true leader the way to drive marketing to build a strong emotional connection and trust.”