Pooja Manek
- Founding Member and Creative Director
- India
- Member since 2021
Pooja Manek is a creative leader, a Cannes Lion Winner, and a changemaker in one. In 2024, she was 1 of the 19 women leaders chosen from 1400 applications from across the globe, to represent India at the Cannes Lions See It Be It programme, a bespoke leadership accelerator for rising female and non-binary leaders. In 2021, she was the only Indian on the Next Creative Leaders list, awarded by The One Club and 3% movement. Over the years her campaigns for Swiggy, Cleartrip, Tinder, among other brands, have done a haul at Cannes, Spikes, D&AD, Effies and Kyoorius. Her campaign for Cleartrip became the first and only silver lion for Talented agency in the founding year. She is known for her pivotal role in helping both local and global iconic brands find their voice in the modern world. She’s also a part of the adjunct faculty at MICA and Miami Ad School, helping shape the creativity and voices of the next generation of stellar creatives. As the founding member of talented, one of the very few employee-owned agencies in the world, Pooja is trying to reimagine the agency experience by changing everything that she has been angry about–in her previous stint and with the industry at large, such as pay disparity, credit hogging, no work-life balance, lack of representation, to name a few. She was also invited to various global stages as a speaker–Adfest 2024, Digital Marketing Association Sri Lanka Summit 2024, and Madstars 2024, to highlight radical insights on the impact of AI and the power of human emotions on the creative process, through her keynote “AI Can’t Get Angry. You Can.”
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