Appointment Builds on the Agency’s New Global Leadership Team, Leans into Brand Consulting as an Accelerant to Client Business Outcomes and Sales Growth

FleishmanHillard today announced the hire of Jim Joseph as global head of Brand Impact. In this role, Joseph will be responsible for leading FleishmanHillard’s global Brand business across B2B, B2C and B2G audiences, leveraging communications to enable commerce and business outcomes for the agency’s clients.

“Everything we do is designed to drive action and impact for our clients, and we have the power and ability to drive commercial outcomes through our work,” said J.J. Carter, FleishmanHillard president and chief executive officer. “Jim’s expertise in client-side brand management, as well as his roles across multiple agency disciplines and industry sectors throughout his career, perfectly position him to make FleishmanHillard the undisputed global destination for brand work and for clients who need a partner that will deliver true business impact.”

FleishmanHillard has long emphasized its Corporate Affairs consulting strength and now brings similar discipline to an elevated Brand Impact offering under Joseph’s leadership. Through this effort FleishmanHillard will focus on driving commercial outcomes rather than communications output and will pull from the firm’s strengths in data and intelligence, strategic integration and its spectrum of industry expertise.

“I feel like joining FleishmanHillard at this moment, in this role is the culmination of my career journey,” said Joseph. “We’re working to be a first mover in the industry reinvention of what brand marketing and communications mean in today’s world and how we can drive business impacts and commerce for our clients.”

Before joining FleishmanHillard, Joseph was at Ketchum where he held various roles including U.S. CEO and global chief marketing officer. Before that he was the chief customer solutions officer at IPG Health and previously served as global president at BCW. Joseph also held roles at Lippe Taylor, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness and GW Hoffman! Marketing. He began his career with positions at Johnson & Johnson and Church & Dwight Co., Inc. Joseph is an adjunct instructor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies and authored four books about marketing, in addition to one about parenting.

Joseph is the latest appointee to Carter’s new global leadership team on the heels of last year’s announcement of Della Sweetman as president, Americas and chief strategy officer, and six new global leadership appointments. The agency has also appointed new market leadership in India, Texas, Thailand and Singapore, and additional leadership expertise roles including Health and Life Sciences, TRUE Global Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Responsible Business and Impact.

FleishmanHillard today announced the appointment of Madhulika Ojha as managing director of its India operations. Based in Mumbai, Ojha will oversee the strategy, operations and growth of the agency’s India offices. She will report to Joanne Wong, Asia Pacific president and senior partner at FleishmanHillard.

Ojha brings nearly 20 years of strategy consulting experience, with deep expertise in designing and implementing large-scale transformation programs to help businesses grow market share, increase shareholder value and enhance operational efficiency through technology enablement. Most recently, she served as an Executive Director in the Strategy and Transactions advisory team at EY in India, where she advised C-level leaders across industries.

Commentating on the appointment, Wong said, “At FleishmanHillard, we focus on the role communications play in driving business outcomes and influencing C-suite priorities and Board discussions. Madhulika’s expertise in post-merger integration, deals and transactions and the financial communications ecosystem offers us growing opportunities to strengthen our position as a trusted advisor. As India’s business and financial landscape evolves rapidly, her leadership will enable us to better support clients in navigating this dynamic environment. We are thrilled to have her join us and lead the next phase of growth and transformation for our India operations.”   

Ojha’s career spans leading global business advisory and technology consulting firms, including EY, Capgemini, Deloitte, TCS and Tech Mahindra. She has advised Fortune 500 corporations across sectors such as financial services, consumer, automotive, life sciences and more, with market exposure spanning Asia, Europe and the Americas.

“The FleishmanHillard team in India has built an impressive foundation, and I’m excited to build upon their success,” Ojha said. “The agency’s commitment to delivering business-informed, technology-powered communications that drive tangible business outcomes aligns perfectly with my passion and professional experience. I look forward to contributing and collaborating with the team to help clients protect, transform and grow their businesses through strategic communications.”

Wong added: “Our focus for India and the broader APAC region in 2025 is to further solidify our unique position as a business-critical advisor, offering both high-level strategic counsel and robust implementation for clients. With management consulting leaders like Madhulika bringing greater strategic depth, combined with our trusted brand, leading global networks and comprehensive offerings, we are confident in achieving this priority.” 

Since 2007, FleishmanHillard India has continued to deliver award-winning campaigns for both global and local clients across sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods, healthcare, technology, financial services, automobile and hospitality. The team has earned numerous accolades, including being recognized as the Public Relations Team of the Year at the 2024 Acer Faster Awards. It has also won Best Consumer Relation Campaign at the 2022 Public Relations Council of India Awards; Best Use of Digital and Print Media at the 2021 Asia Pacific IN2SABRE Awards; and both the Technology: Hardware and Financial & Professional Services categories at the 2020 Asia Pacific SABRE Awards.

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 20, 2025 – FleishmanHillard today announced the appointment of Thomas Skelton as the regional lead of its award-winning research and analytics practice – TRUE Global Intelligence (TGI) – in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. Based in Singapore, Skelton will oversee the growth and operations of TGI in APAC, driving the agency’s expanding research and analytics capabilities to deliver data-driven insights and solutions for clients across the region. He will report to Joanne Wong, APAC president and senior partner at FleishmanHillard.

“Tom’s deep understanding of the region and proven expertise in research and analytics will be invaluable to the team as we continue to elevate the impact of our TGI offering and better serve clients in APAC,” said Wong. “His appointment is also a testament to our strategic focus on embedding data and intelligence in every aspect of our work, seamlessly blending data, communication expertise and creative brilliance to create outcomes that truly matter to our clients’ businesses.”

Wong continued, “Our clients are navigating an increasingly complex business ecosystem, requiring communications to be more bespoke and outcome driven than never before, which is only possible with the power of data. As we work to elevate our unique position as the communications advisor who can deliver both intelligence-informed strategy and impactful execution in 2025, Tom’s leadership and the entire TGI team will play a key role in driving this vision forward.”

Marjorie Benzkofer, global lead of TGI, added, “Data and analytics are at the heart of our global strategy to drive value and innovation for clients worldwide. Tom’s leadership will be instrumental in further integrating these capabilities into our APAC operations, equipping our teams to deliver transformative, market-specific solutions. We’re excited to welcome him to the TGI team and leverage his unique experiences and insights from the APAC perspective, which is increasingly vital to our clients and business globally.”

With extensive experience across consultancies and in-house roles in the UK, China and Singapore, Skelton brings a proven track record of developing and implementing data-driven strategies for global and local organizations in the APAC region. Before joining FleishmanHillard, he led the APAC Consultancy Practice at TEAM LEWIS, including its research and analytics team across six markets in the region. Prior to that, he held the role of Senior Manager, Communications Strategy, APAC at Cision, a consumer and media intelligence company.

FleishmanHillard’s TGI practice reveals the truth about clients’ stakeholders, their competitive landscape and impact on desired outcomes. These insights ensure resonant connections with audiences to help clients realize goals and sustain success. The practice offers a range of consulting offerings, enabled by the OPRG Data Stack – our suite of digital tools designed to meet critical intelligence needs, including:

Audience offerings: journal mapping, data-driven media mapping, KOL/influencer identification and intelligence to enhance the profiling and targeting of a client’s key stakeholders.

Business offerings: industry outlook and competitive research, media research and monitoring services to better understand the business environment in which a client operates.  

Reputation offerings: issues indexing and tracking, crisis assessment and narrative gap analysis to help clients identify top opportunities to build reputation and mitigate risks.

Assessment offerings: KPI framework development and message/creative concept testing to effectively evaluate communications outputs and outcomes.

The TGI practice operates in key APAC markets, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and India.