What you need to know:

• Jessica White has been named CEO of Reprise, Mediabrands’ performance agency.
• She fills the role left by Maria Grivas, who was tapped to lead Mindshare by GroupM CEO Aimee Buchanan.
• Mark Coad, CEO of Mediabrands, said White’s deep performance roots makes her ideal to lead Reprise.

Mediabrands Australia has named Jessica White, until recently New York-based Head of Audience and Act at Initiative, as CEO of Reprise after the departure of Maria Grivas to Mindshare earlier this year.

White, an Aussie who moved to the in 2017 after leading Cadreon (now Matterkind) in Australia, will lead the full-service performance agency and immediately join Mediabrands’ Executive Leadership Team. She’ll report to Mediabrands CEO Mark Coad and starts on November 1.

Coad welcomed White to the team and said she was chosen to lead Reprise because of her deep performance skills, 15-year history both agency- and client-side and work with major brands on media and brand transformation projects.

She is “a leader who knows Reprise’s vision as an agency and has the skills and capabilities to stimulate client growth by using the perfect mix of insight and technology to create innovative and best-in-class work,” he said.

White said in a statement: “Increasingly I hear clients wanting more accountability for their media spend, so better connecting media to business outcomes will be an area of focus.”

White takes over from Andy Holford, who stepped into the role of Interim-CEO earlier this year. Coad thanked Holford for his work.

“He is a wonderful leader who has successfully enhanced Reprise’s culture leading his team and clients to success, but he made it clear to us as we embarked on the search for Jessica that his passion lay in building product and solutions for clients, rather than management,” Coad said.

Grivas was tapped by GroupM CEO Aimee Buchanan to lead Mindshare Australia, after Katie Rigg-Smith took a role as WPP’s Chief Strategy Officer in ANZ.