An Effort to Close the Gender Gap in Advertising Agency Ownership is Here

This shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but I have a day job. At Cornett. It's an ad agency. And I love it there. What may come as a surprise to you is Christy Hiler, the owner at Cornett, is very rare in the ad business. And by that, I mean less than one percent of all advertising agency owners are women. Read that one more time. Yeah ... I know?! Today, Christy is launching an industry change agent movement called Own It. The effort is calling on women who own all or most of ad agencies to come together to join a community of leaders to discuss, dissect and defeat the problem. Interested women or non-binary owners can sign up to be a part of conversations, mentorship and more, at UntilYouOwnIt.com. Participants may also be invited to help discuss solutions to the problem on Christy's new podcast, also called Own It. Today on a special edition of Winfluence, we present a mini-version of the premier episode of the show. The 10-minute edit features Hiler interviewing Jean Freeman, the principal and owner at Zambezi, the largest female-owned advertising agency in the U.S. And for those of you who are interest in knowing, I produce the show for Christy. It is also the newest entry in the Marketing Podcast Network. This episode of Winfluence is still presented by Tagger, but we're foregoing the sponsor talk today so you can hear the debut of Own It from Christy Hiler. Be sure to subscribe to Own It at UntilYouOwnIt.com or by searching for Own It wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices