The Collective raises concern over lack of women leaders in newly announced Omnicom-IPG structure

In the wake of Omnicom completing its acquisition of Interpublic Group, the leadership structure unveiled for the merged entity has drawn sharp criticism from The Collective — an industry consortium of senior women leaders, including Ashwini Deshpande, Tista Sen, Swati Bhattacharya, Kainaz Karmakar, Deepa Geethakrishnan, Delna Sethna, Malvika Mehra, Alpana Parida, Preeti Vyas, Shagun Seda, Pallavi Chakravarti, Lulu Raghavan, Aazmeen Kasad, Deepa Shankar, among others. The group focuses on advocating for equitable workplace environments and amplifying the voices of women across advertising, media and design.

The Collective flagged the near-absence of women in the top roles announced for Omnicom Advertising India, calling it symptomatic of “a deep-rooted culture” that restricts women’s progression to leadership positions.

“While agency mergers are a sign of the times, what is more telling is the lack of women leaders at the helm,” the organisation said in a statement shared with Social Samosa. “This is a merger of seven agencies with remarkable talent and an impressive roster of clients. What is galling is that not a single one of them thought any woman leader is worthy of the new appointments.”

The merged entity brings together Omnicom’s and IPG’s creative and media operations under one umbrella. In creative, Omnicom announced a consolidated leadership slate comprising Prasoon Joshi (Chairman, Omnicom Advertising India), Aditya Kanthy (President & Managing Director, Omnicom Advertising India), S. Subramanyeswar (Chief Strategy Officer India & Chief Knowledge Officer Omnicom Advertising Asia), Vineet Bajpai (CEO, Omnicom Production India), Dheeraj Sinha (CEO, McCann Worldgroup India), Rahul Mathew (CCO, McCann Worldgroup India), Josy Paul (continuing to lead BBDO India), Chandni Shah (CEO, Kinnect–22Feet Tribal) and Rohan Mehta (Digital Integration & Capability Building, Omnicom Advertising India).

On the media side, with IPG Mediabrands folded into the unified structure, all six agencies now sit under Omnicom Media, led by Kartik Sharma (CEO), Amardeep Singh (COO) and Shashi Sinha (Strategic Advisor).

The Collective contrasted this with the earlier leadership across both networks, where several women held CEO-level responsibilities, including: Vaishali Verma (Initiative Media), Aditi Mishra (Lodestar UM), Shantanu Sirohi (Interactive Avenues) and Vinkoo Chakraborty (Rapport Chrome) at IPG Mediabrands, along with Anisha Iyer (OMD India), Monaz Todywalla (PHD India) and Rochelle Chhaya (Hearts & Science APAC) within Omnicom’s media businesses.

In its statement, The Collective added that the pattern sets a troubling precedent. 

“The industry challenge is not just AI but a systematic deep-rooted culture that grooms few women to take on leadership roles. As role models of the most powerful holding company today, all we see is a gender submission which is subservient and quite honestly appalling. More power to Chandni Shah — we couldn’t be more proud. However, what we are calling out is a precedent that further cements a bro-code that is detrimental to young women who join the industry, and this needs to change.”

Social Samosa reached out to Omnicom for a response to the concerns raised regarding gender representation in leadership. The network had not responded at the time of publishing.