As the President of Havas Chicago, Nikki Laughlin leads the Chicago Village and is responsible for fostering a collaborative culture across disciplines and building bespoke teams in service to each client’s needs.

Nikki has spent over 20 years in agency-side leadership, client-side leadership and in tech at Facebook. She understands the unique set of challenges faced by today’s CMOs and brings a holistic perspective to solving clients’ business problems with creativity.

Throughout her career, Nikki has guided many notable brands in the retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and travel industries to leverage data and creativity to build meaningful relationships with their consumers in an ever-evolving marketplace.

Recognized as one of the “Top Women in Grocery” by Progressive Grocer, Nikki is skilled at delivering incremental business growth that engages consumers in a digital world.

Raised in public housing by his grandmother on the south side of Dallas, John found inspiration and friendship in art and basketball. He was recognized in high school for art and photography on a national level and for basketball as an all-state player. John is a classically-trained designer with a degree in fine arts from Texas A&M University, where he was recently named a distinguished alumni. As a student, John was selected as one of only 18 design majors across the country to receive a Champion Paper Imagination scholarship. His student portfolio was published in a nationally released book, A Professional Guide to Marketing Your Work, and Mary Yeung of HOW magazine said of him, “. . . he has great concepts, impeccable technical skills, enthusiasm for design, a sense of humor, and exceptional problem-solving abilities.”

John believes in the transformative power of storytelling. According to John, in a world of fragmented messaging, information overload, and industry uncertainty, ideas with a simple human truth, told with a provocative single-minded narratives that work across all media channels, will win. He is convinced that most great ideas are simple, and simplicity will always cut through the noise and make an emotional connection with people. John has made a career of attracting the best talent to each position he holds, and inspiring them to create their magic. John practices a leadership style of “freedom within a framework” that he learned from his earliest days at Wieden & Kennedy. This style gives teams the room to fail, learn, succeed, and repeat.

John excels in building teams, connecting talent, and in creating a working environment where people want to succeed and grow. His holistic team approach to creative challenges has allowed him to lead and craft brand identities, campaigns, social conversations, digital experiences, and experiential environments for iconic brands such as Nike, Apple, BASF, Hewlett Packard, NBA, Wyndham Hotels, Adidas, Benetton, Coke-Cola, the American Indian College Fund, Pepsi, BF Goodrich, Heineken, NFL, State Farm, Gatorade, Beats, the NBA, Pirelli, and The Ad Council. Some of his work is still in use today, three decades after he created it. John has been fortunate to work with some great leaders over the years including Phil Knight, Tinker Hatfield, Dan Wieden, Oliviero Toscani, Steve Jobs, Carly Fiorina, Lee Clow, Steve Stoute, and Jimmy Iovine, as well as many others in his career.

Throughout John’s career, he has lived in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Italy, San Francisco, New York, and, now, Chicago. His work has been widely recognized and has won awards including an Emmy, an Emmy nomination, the Cannes Grand Prix, the Grand Prix Epica Award, the New York Art Directors’ Vision Award, Campaign of the Year and the Top 5 Award, multiple Cannes, Effies and One Show medals, the Japan Nikkei Award, the Russian Grand Effie, and Adweek’s Spot of the Year. In addition, his work has been featured in almost every advertising and design publication. The “Happiness Factory” campaign for Coca Cola and “Write the Future” for Nike remain two of the most highly-awarded integrated global campaigns ever. Every day, John feels lucky to be an only child who grew up and gets to work in a community of creative people who love art, sports, and culture.

As Chief Strategy Officer, Lilia Arroyo Flores is responsible for building and leading the strategy department across Havas Chicago, Annex Chicago and Annex Experience, to bring together human truths, data, analytics and insights.

After spending more than two decades working in advertising, communications and marketing, Lilia has mastered the ability for brands to engage people, drive brand conversation, and garner media headlines – it is through creative strategies fueled by understanding culture, human behavior, rigorous data intelligence and rich storytelling.

Lilia joined Havas from Edelman, where she was Executive Vice President, Head of Strategic Planning. She is a team leader and passionate mentor who motivates teams to increase productivity, creativity and business growth.

During her tenure at Edelman, Lilia partnered with CEOs, CMOs, CCOs, and other senior executives to identify audience insights and business strategies that drive brand equity, consideration, differentiation and growth.

Prior to Edelman, Lilia has been a brand catalyst at Leo Burnett and FCB. She has worked with multimillion-dollar global brands including: P&G, Coca-Cola and Walmart. She has been a featured speaker and workshop facilitator at Chicago Ideas Week, American Marketing Association and 4A’s StratFest.

Lilia is an outspoken advocate for Diversity & Inclusion and currently serves on the National Board of Directors of The Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement (HACE). In addition, she also serves on the Medical Center Board of Directors of Ann & Robert H. Lurie’s Children’s Hospital and enjoys guest lecturing at her alma mater, DePaul University.

As Chief Growth Officer, Jamie is responsible for driving business growth for Havas Chicago Creative, Annex Chicago and Annex Experience. She leads a coordinated business development practice and oversees agency brand and communications. She also partners with other Havas agencies on integrated growth opportunities for the Havas Village model.

A proven growth driver with an eye on what’s trending in the marketplace, Jamie approach to business development is focused on delivering big creative ideas that are customer-centric, culture-leading and brought to life on modern platforms.

Jamie has a passion for winning new business and brings a strong track record of substantial wins throughout her career, including the U.S. Army, McDonald’s, Miller Lite, Blue Moon, Fiat, Chrysler, Symantec, iShares by BlackRock, Kroger, Big Lots, Jiffy Lube, and more.

Jamie joined Havas Chicago in 2020 after six years at DDB U.S., where she mostly recently served as EVP, Director of Business Development. In this role, she was responsible for integrating new business efforts and driving growth across the agency’s U.S. offices, including Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Prior to DDB, Jamie was Director of New Business Development at O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul. Previously, she spent 10 years at FCB Chicago, where she rose through the ranks from Business Development Coordinator to VP, Director of New Business.

Jamie serves as the Chair of the 4A’s National Large Agency New Business Committee and was recognized as a Working Mother of the Year by She Runs It in 2019. She’s also engaged in the broader U.S. new business community, supporting industry groups such as AdForum, ANA, Mirren NY, Mirren CEO Chicago, Chicago Advertising Federation.

A Chicago native, Jamie earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently resides in nearby Indiana with her family, including two kids, one dog, three fish and three turtles.

As Chief Client Officer, Maisha Pearson serves as executive client lead and is responsible for overseeing our roster of clients across Havas Chicago, Annex Chicago and Annex Experience. Maisha is a visionary leader with a creative spirit and proven experience successfully growing client accounts.

Maisha joined Havas Chicago from Burrell Communications, where she was recruited to bolster and grow client relationships. During that time, Maisha developed the communications plan for McDonald’s largest African American integrated marketing brand campaign for McDonald’s in 16 years – Black & Positively Golden. The plan resulted in a 49% increase in customer brand score. She enhanced the account and team performance evaluation score, resulting in a 15% budget increase. Maisha also collaborated with the Burrell’s CEO on employee and client retention, while leading PR and supporting new business.

Prior to Burrell, Maisha served as Vice President at Porter Novelli. She brings a wealth of category experience in QSR, Retail, CPG, Hospitality, Lifestyle, Beauty, Utility and Medical Devices.

Angelo oversees our financial and internal operations. He is responsible for partnering with senior management on the strategic analysis, budgeting, and reporting of financial information, as well as oversight of Facility and IT functions.

Angelo’s experience includes time at the Chicago offices of Draftfcb and Edelman. He was a key advisor to agency management, leading the development and implementation of management reporting tools, policies, and procedures for effective management of the agency and client profitability.