Tammy is a South African born creative director living in Chicago. Over the last 19 years, she has worked across three continents for some of the best agencies on their most high-profile accounts.
She has been very fortunate to have won 3 Cannes Grand Prix’s, D&AD pencils and golds at Cannes, Clios One Show and LIA. She has also judged at D&AD, One Show and the South African Loeries awards. And at Ogilvy Johannesburg, was named best art director in South Africa twice, and five times in in the top ten.
She is passionate about people, their stories and digging for interesting insights and ideas and believes that we are never done learning about innovation and new technology.
She lives in a house full of boys with her husband, two kids, and a cheeky French poodle called Gaston.
EXPERIENCE
2025 - present: Global Creative Director
Ogilvy Chicago, USA
SC Johnson, Dove, City of Chicago, Chobani, Coca-Cola
2024 - 2025: SVP Creative Director
Leo Chicago, USA
Kelloggs, Basil Hayden
Tammy led and mentored a diverse team of 20 creatives, driving innovative and impactful campaigns for major clients including WK Kellogg’s Co. and Beam Suntory. She collaborated closely with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment of creative vision with strategic goals, delivering cohesive and compelling brand narratives as well as managing the creative process from ideation to delivery, optimizing workflows, while fostering a high-performance team-centric environment.
2020 - 2024 Global Creative Director
Ogilvy Chicago, USA
Tyson, SC Johnson, Dove, Absolut, City of Chicago
After spending 9 very successful years at Ogilvy Johannesburg, Tammy was headhunted by Ogilvy Chicago to fill the role of Global Creative Director on the SC Johnson account. She was hired to run the global creative communication for Glade, an international leader in the Air Care category. During her time on the account, it was one of the largest pieces of business in the Ogilvy global stable. She worked to evolve the brand to break free from category clichés and reposition themselves as timelier and more modern. She oversaw everything globally, from classic above-the-line comms to product design + positioning, innovations, paid and organic social, brand activations and beyond.
She also works on new business initiatives and other key, blue-chip Ogilvy Chicago clients.
2011 - 2020: Creative Group Head
Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg, South Africa
Cadbury, KFC, GSK, DStv, Greenpeace, Audi, Philips, Coca-Cola, Unicef, AB INBEV, Investec
Tammy had an incredible 9-year tenure at Ogilvy Johannesburg. During her time there, she was named the best art director in South Africa twice (based on international creative points) and was listed in the top ten 5 times. This was extremely well deserved, because she managed to pull in over 17 Cannes Lions - including 3 Cannes Grand Prix over consecutive years. She also won multiple Golds at every other major internationally-revered awards show, including D&AD (9 pencils), One Show, Clios, Lia, Loeries and more. WPP even gave her the ‘WPP Crème de la Crème Award’ for the Best Advertisement in the entire WPP Network, a highly competitive and top honor.
Every brand she ran was consistently named in the Sunday Times Best Brands Top Ten since 2010. Sunday Times is South Africa biggest and more trusted news source. In addition to this, she was often featured in the Top Ten Brands for the Loerie Awards - in the category of Creative Excellence in Africa and the Middle East. She worked on many major blue-chip clients such as Lucozade, KFC, Castle Lager, and Cadbury. Lucozade is one of the most popular energy drinks internationally. KFC Africa is the 5th largest YUM! brand region in the world. Castle Lager is 4th on the list of South African brands with the greatest value according to a report released by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown (with a value of $3.2 billion). And lastly, Cadbury is the second largest confectionary brand in the world, operating in more than 50 countries, with a 47% market share in South Africa.
2009-2011: Senior Art Director
MetropolitanRepublic, Johannesburg,South Africa
MTN South Africa and Africa, FNB, Aveng, Wimpy, Kitty & Puppy Haven, CSS and Arrive Alive.
Tammy worked as an art director on MTN, a $15 billion mobile network operator that provides voice, data, enterprise, wholesale and API services to more than 289 million customers in 19 markets. It was a mega, global account and she got a lot of big business experience. She created effective, creative, fully integrated campaigns that saw massive success in each market.
She was also lucky enough to win a local Vuka award for a TV campaign for Drive Alive, which gave her entry to the Cannes Young Lions Film competition - where she won a silver lion.
2008-2009: Art Director
TBWA Cawley-Nea, Dublin, Ireland
Heineken, Tesco, Topaz (Shell), Irish Times, Pedigree and Whiskas.
Tammy was recruited from South Africa to work as an art director and lead creative. She was tasked to ideate and oversee junior teams. During her time there, she worked on integrated and highly impactful campaigns for Sony PlayStation, Jameson Whiskey and the Irish Times Newspaper.
2007-2008: Art Director
MetropolitanRepublic, Johannesburg,South Africa
MTN South Africa and Africa, FNB, Aveng, Wimpy, Puppy Haven,
CSS and Arrive Alive.
2005-2007: Junior Art Director
TBWA Hunt Lascaris, Johannesburg, South Africa
Jameson Whiskey, Standard Bank, BMW, Sasol, Tiger Brands,
Welede Pharmacy, National Lottery and SAFACT.
Tammy was hired as an art director, with a primary focus on integrated thinking and campaigns. She was also a key member of the new business team and pitched on prestigious brands such as BMW, Standard Bank, Tiger Brands, WWF, MTN and Jameson. She was dedicated and devoted to her craft, actively contributing to seeing the agency win Global Agency Network of the year by Advertising Age Magazine in 2005.
2001 - 2004
Vega, The Brand Communications School
BA,Creative Brand Communications
Major: Art direction