Leland Maschmeyer
- Co-founder and CEO
- United States
Leland is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of COLLINS, the transformation consultancy honored as “Firm of the Year” 6 times in the last 7 years by AdAge and the D&AD. Between 2016 and 2021, Leland stepped away from his day-to-day duties at COLLINS to lead Chobani, then a regional American yogurt manufacturer, as its first Chief Creative Officer and, eventually, Chief Brand Officer. In those five years, he was part of a small executive team that 10x’d the company’s valuation, transforming the single-product yogurt maker into an international iconoclast brand awarded globally for its creativity and social impact. In that period, he built Ad-Age’s “2018 In-House Agency of the Year” and won top honors from major global award shows such as D&AD, Cannes, The One Show, among others. During his five years of leadership, Chobani topped Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies in the World” list five times – something not achieved by the manufacturer before or after his tenure.
Leland is also the co-founder of Sway, a clean materials company that has created an entirely new category of biopolymer resin: a thermoplastic seaweed resin that can replace flexible petroleum plastics at scale using existing plastic manufacturing infrastructure. It is a USDA Certified 100% Biobased, home-compostable and microplastic-free material who feedstock is a regenerative ocean crop that replenishes ecosystems and supports coastal communities. In 2023, TOM FORD awarded Sway its “Plastic Innovation Accelerator” as the world’s most viable, marine-safe alternative to traditional thin-film plastic.
Between COLLINS, Chobani, Sway and other endeavors, Leland has built organizations honored as the most innovative in the world: “Company of the Year” finalist (Fast Co), “30 Most Important Design Companies” (Fast Co), “Most Innovative Company in the World” (Fast Co) x5, “50 Best Places for Innovators” (Fast Co), “Agency Inventing the Future of Brand Building” (Forbes), “Brand that Matters” (Fortune), “Brands Changing the World” (Forbes).
He has earned recognition from the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, from IBM as “Design Thinking Leader,” from Ad Age as a “Young Influencer” and from the Association Of National Advertisers as a “Master of Marketing.”
Contact Leland.
