Kai Weidie has been selected to serve as Dentsu International’s first senior vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion.
In the newly created role, Weidie will drive diversity initiatives, increase support for minority new hires and create more inclusive client campaigns across Dentsu’s media agencies in the Americas, Adweek reported Monday.
She will report to Dentsu CEO Doug Rosen and chief equity officer for Dentsu Americas, Christena Pyle.
Rosen said the role was created to reflect Dentsu’s mission to champion “meaningful progress” for its employees, its clients and the media industry, and that Weidie’s appointment as DEI executive will help ensure that diversified representation exists at the core of the company’s media plans.
“As we continue our pursuit to make real change in media, Kai’s experience challenging the status quo and tackling inclusion issues head-on in advertising will lead us into an equitable future like never before,” Rosen continued.
Weidie joins Dentsu from Bloomberg, where she served as a diversity and inclusion client partner. Previously, she also served for over two years as director of diversity and engagement at McCann New York.
The new SVP said a major component of her decision to join Dentsu was the company’s readiness and commitment to implementing new diversity and inclusion strategies.
As part of its commitment, Dentsu released its first diversity, equity and inclusion report in May to detail the firm’s focus areas and strategic framework for deploying DEI principles across all business operations.
Weidie added, “It was really important to me that I work with an organization that’s nimble and really ready to take a fresh approach.”
