Kiessé Lamour Global Head of Media, Commerce Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology

Kiessé is Global Head of Media, Commerce at Wunderman Thompson, which she joined in August 2021 to establish and scale the business’ commerce media practice and operations globally, as well as embed new capabilities and processes across various regions.

Before joining Wunderman Thompson, Kiessé was Head of Industry Partnerships at Pinterest UK, where she was responsible for building and leading a team to help marketers drive business growth on the platform.

Prior to that, Kiessé held various leadership roles in programmatic, paid search, social and brand safety within Omnicom Media Group UK, where she worked for 8 years. At Omnicom Media Group UK, Kiessé has been responsible for establishing operational excellence, driving commercial efficiency and pushing the standards for brand safety, fraud prevention and viewability. She also led strategy and planning for Programmatic and Paid Search across a vast portfolio of clients whilst building Omnicom’s Programmatic Audio offering from the ground up.

Early in her career she worked in Ireland and France for companies like Google, Unilever and Société Générale.

Kiessé studied British, American and Afro-American studies at the Université Grenoble Alpes, and also holds a Master’s of International Business from the Grenoble School of Business.

She is married with 2 daughters (12 yo and 6 yo) and enjoys African fashion, travelling, reading, cooking with her husband, going out with her girlfriends, binging Nollywood on Netflix and Amazon Prime and spending quality time with her daughters.

James Hewes CEO PRCA, UK

James Hewes started his career in media working at BBC Worldwide (now BBC Studios), the commercial division of the BBC, the UK state broadcaster. He worked in their publishing business, BBC Magazines, for 12 years, building a track record of success in marketing, digital and print media, events and international business development. James was a key member of the team that sold BBC Magazines to private equity in November 2011 for £120m, leading to the creation of Immediate Media.

As Publishing Director of Dubai-based Gulf News Publishing from 2013 to 2016, he had responsibility for more than 30 product areas and launched new brands across digital, live events and print including the group’s first consumer title in Arabic. He was then Interim CEO of The Art Newspaper from 2016-2017 whilst also running his own company, Soho Consulting.

He was President & CEO of FIPP from September 2017 to the end of 2023, re-positioning the 100-year old media trade association as a business focused on learning, knowledge sharing, skills development and networking. Having successfully steered the business through the pandemic, he led the outsourcing of their events business and launched FIPP Consulting, the association’s in-house consulting arm.

In January 2024, he was appointed CEO of PRCA, the world’s largest and most influential PR professional body.