DNA Expands Creative Leadership Team with New Hires

DNA is continuing its hiring drive, with the addition of proven creative leader Steve Williams as Co-Executive Creative Director, and Noel Nickol and Jon Lazar as Creative Directors. The moves follow the recent hire of Christine Wise as Chief Strategy Officer, and growth in new and existing client business.
As ECD, Williams is re-uniting with his former creative partner Scott Fero who has been at DNA for two years as ECD. Williams had been successfully freelancing for the past two years after leaving Publicis Seattle where he was Group Creative Director. During his 11-year run at Publicis, Williams created T-Mobile’s long-running NBA sponsorship campaign featuring Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade which was named Time Magazine’s Campaign of the Year. He also worked on behalf of such brands as Visit Seattle, American Girl, Ore-Ida, Eddie Bauer and more. His career includes roles at Ogilvy LA, Campbell-Ewald and others.
“We have been big fans of Steve’s for a long time and being able to bring him on to help lead our growing creative department is a coup for the agency,” explained Dan Gross, Co-Founder and Chairman of DNA. “We’ve been able to add some great new talent over the past few months, and it’s already making a difference not just in our work, but in the culture here.”
The agency is also adding two notable Creative Directors who will be responsible for guiding the day to day operations of the creative department. Noel Nickol is joining DNA from Rokkan in New York where he was a creative director for the past two-and-a-half years on the integrated “Dare Greatly” campaign for Cadillac and contributing to Verizon, The Humane Society, Hallmark and others. He previously worked at Leo Burnett, Colangelo and The Gate Worldwide.
Jon Lazar is coming on board from Vitro where he was Creative Director. Before that he had a successful 5-year freelance run working on award-winning work at 72 & Sunny, Pereira & O’Dell, Barton, Leo Burnett and others, on such brands as Adidas, Dos Equis, Square, Sprint, Fox Sports, YouTube, and United Airlines. He is relocating from San Diego to Seattle.
“What each of these talented creatives bring to DNA are successful integrated ideas that have broken ground in multiple channels for national and regional clients” said Alan Brown, Co-Founder and CEO at DNA. “With our reinvigorated creative, strategy and planning departments, DNA is well positioned to bring our clients new marketplace solutions that will drive results.”
In commenting on his move to DNA, Steve Williams said, “Freelance has been great, but I wanted to eventually find a permanent home that cared about creative ideas and the people who make them. DNA is building something exciting, and I’m fired up to jump in with them.”
DNA has been on a growth spurt since 2017, adding numerous new clients over the past year that include Ben Bridge Jewelers, Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, Columbia University Medical Center, Committee for Children (Social/Emotional Learning tools for teachers), Memorial Care Health System, Cray Super Computing, Consumer Cellular, Amazon Twitch, Swedish Medical Centers and Stolen Youth (ProBono).