LIA announces the 2022 Creative LIAisons mentees and coaches from Australia

This year 12 mentees from Australia will be participating in London International Awards, Creative LIAisons educational program. The program’s goal is to be the elite standard in creative coaching, helping to develop, educate, inspire and grow young creative talent.

The virtual coaching experience creates personal connections through one-to-one interactions, allowing young creatives to tap into the minds, expertise and experiences of respected industry icons. This program matches approximately 150 mentees from around the world with 150 coaches, giving each mentee three one-to-one e-coaching sessions.

LIA’s coaches are agency creatives, clients, production executives, leaders in the tech world and account and strategy professionals. Each session is personal and tailored to give the mentee the necessary tools to develop skills that will propel them forward. When matching mentees with their coaches we are cognizant of the interests of the mentees, providing them coaches with perspectives from different regions of the world. LIA does not match mentees with coaches from their own company.

Meet the Mentees from Australia:

Brittany Benitez, Junior Designer, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney
Nicholas Duron, Senior Creative, Digitas, Sydney
Isabel Evans, Copywriter, VMLY&R, Melbourne
Chloe Herbert-Smith, Art Director, Leo Burnett, Melbourne
Isabella Iliovski, Junior Art Director, Freelance Creative, Melbourne
Katie Kidd, Art Director, The Monkeys, Sydney
Liam Ratliff, Copywriter, Ogilvy, Melbourne
Trinity Ross, Founder, Superthink, Melbourne
Marijke Spain, Senior Art Director, Leo Burnett, Sydney
Jessie Staszkiewicz, Copywriter, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney
Yaraman Thorne, Copywriter, Brand Studio, Sydney
Lizzie Wood, Copywriter, The Monkeys, Sydney

View the complete list of Mentees

Meet the Coaches from Australia:

Laura Aldington, CEO, Host/Havas, Sydney
Simon Bagnasco, Executive Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi, Melbourne
Adrian Bosich, Managing Partner / Creative Founder, Airbag, Melbourne
Kent Boswell, National Director of Interactive, Traffik Group, Sydney
Dave Bowman, APAC Head of Creative, Google, Sydney
Anna Fawcett, Executive Producer, Filmgraphics, Sydney
Adam Ferrier, Founder and Chief Strategy Thinker, Thinkerbell, Sydney
Barbara Humphries, Executive Creative Director, The Monkeys, Sydney
Adrian Mills, Partner, Creative Brand Advertising, Deloitte Digital, Melbourne
Edward Pontifex, Managing Director, Sweetshop Australia, Sydney
Nickie Scriven, Zenith Australia, Chief Executive Officer, Sydney

View the complete list of Coaches

In addition to being one-to-one with some of the world’s most respected industry leaders, mentees also have the unique privilege to virtually observe LIA statue discussions in real-time this October.

Alongside the coaching sessions the learning continues with a series of virtual speaker sessions.  These are master webinars that will help young creatives advance their learning and navigate their careers. Our virtual webinar speakers include Omid Farhang, founder/CEO of Majority, Marty Martinez, chief creative officer at Tank Worldwide, Pum Lefebure, CCO / co-founder of Design Army, Bianca Guimaraes, partner / executive creative director at Mischief, Janina Lundy, head of emerging audience development at Amazon Studios & Prime Video and Sébastien Rouvière, creative director at DAVID, Madrid.

Industry leaders have praised this program as being an invaluable training tool for young creatives. As a testament to how truly valuable this experience is, a number of past attendees quickly rose through the ranks to become high level creatives, company owners, or hold managerial positions at some of the world’s best known agencies, tech companies and brands.  An elite few have been invited back as LIA Jurors or as Creative LIAisons Coaches.

Since the inception of the Creative LIAisons program in 2012, over 1,000 young creatives have had the opportunity to participate. In 2021, in response to the global pandemic, LIA created the virtual networking program to continue to inspire, develop and grow young creative talent. LIA has decided to continue to fund and operate both its on-site and virtual programs this year and going forward.