Tim Healey talks to the global brand executive and author of The Business of Aspiration to find out more about her career to date. Ana Andjelic You have a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University. You write extensively for various publications.
You’ve been listed in the top 50 Forbes most entrepreneurial CMOs in 2024. You have traveled from agency- to client-side. You’ve been a strategist at AKQA, Razorfish, the Barbarian Group, a senior planner at Huge; you’ve been at Droga 5 and then Spring Studios.
You’ve been global strategy director and chief brand officer at Rebecca Minkoff, CMO at Matthew Gabriel, chief brand officer at Banana Republic and for two years at Esprit, as global brand officer. You are also a very respected author and keynote lecturer on all matters marketing. Please walk us through your career journey.
The idea was never to go into marketing. I studied psychology, then I did a master’s in media studies, then a PhD in sociology: sociology of innovation and sociology of technology. I explored how innovation spreads in a society, how people adopt new trends and how influence spreads in a society – basically, how to organize a creative company or to ensure there is effective innovation in companies.
During my academic journey, I started working at AKQA and I was then doing my field research at Razorfish. That’s how it all started. It was all for my dissertation.
And then I stayed at Razorfish for two years, working with their digital strate.