Paul Ward

Paul Ward

Chief Operating Officer at Havas Worldwide London
Hollingbury, United Kingdom

About me

I'm a fan of beautiful things.

I like hanging around with people who are nice, talented, work hard and a good laugh.

I've got a knack for bringing people together and getting the best out of them. I don't suffer fools, but I do sometimes envy them. I am fond of a simple creative process and would be most at home improving culture and getting companies to better work.

I make work fun, but ensure people take it seriously and improve.

People like working for me. So I'm told.

Sector Experience
Awards

Positions

Head of Operations and Innovation - UK Group
Havas Worldwide London
September 2015 - Present (9 years 3 months)
Based in Alfred Street but can be found in one of our many offices in, around London.

Responsible for knitting together people, process, environment and output together across all of the Havas Creative Group brands here in the UK.

We're looking for creatively minded, interesting, energetic, entrepreneurial people to work with, hire or just chat to - get in touch.
Holiday between jobs
On holiday and then relocating to UK.
May 2015 - September 2015 (4 months)
Chief Creative Operations Officer
Naked Communications
December 2013 - May 2015 (1 year 5 months)
Responsible for Naked's global output.

Working with creative, production and anyone else who can help to make our creative work the best it could possibly be. Based in the Sydney head office, but regularly travelling between London and New York.

The role across the group offices mostly entailed partnering the creative and production functions, whilst ensuring we continued to operate a robust and meaningful process across each location. Similar to my time at BBH, my key brief was to try and make the business have more similarities than differences across the group.

Working with Creative Directors and their local resource leads to make sure they manage their local resources tightly, whilst also having the right people in the business at all times. Armed with a healthy global network of contacts I played a key role in attracting and managing creative and production talent to the business.

Local COO role in Naked Australia included all aspects of the role one would imagine. Working as a three-man team alongside the CEO and FD managing the day-to-day issues a small business would expect, whilst co-authoring action plans, financial reviews and ongoing business plans.
Regional COO
Host Sydney
August 2012 - December 2013 (1 year 4 months)
Regional COO for Host, a business delivering ambitious ideas for adventurous clients.

Working with the Group CEO, we successfully launched Host Singapore, the agency's first office outside of Sydney. A successful first year with client wins such as Google, Unilever, Citibank and Top Shop developed into an opportunity to partner Havas more closely in the region, in doing so leveraging the Group's more established back office offering.
Managing Partner
BBH India
April 2011 - April 2012 (1 year)
In the role of Managing Director, working alongside the three other Managing Partners and responsible for the day-to-day running of the business.

An additional brief to help stabilise the business and improve the culture, following the exit of one of the original founding partners.

A crazy year, with far more ups than downs yet we still managed to continue a steady growth curve, whilst creating some decent work, adding some quality foundations to the creative process and vastly improving the overall vibe.
Head of Operations, Asia
BBH Asia Pacific (Singapore)
January 2010 - April 2011 (1 year 3 months)
A regional project working across all three offices (Singapore, Shanghai and Mumbai) with a brief to improve our network of creative and production partnerships across the board and better align our production capabilities.

We enjoyed great success with better processes, a far improved overall approach to our output and key hires placed within each office. Additionally two major in-house partnerships: Wellcom (integrated) and The Mill (film) served to turbo charge our SE Asia capabilities. The Mill being a joint venture post production start-up, the first of its kind in Asia.
Group Operations Director
BBH India
September 2008 - December 2009 (1 year 3 months)
Having worked within the core team scoping BBH's Indian start-up it soon became clear the 'representative from headquarters' was going to be me.

I was seconded to India with a brief to drive the start-up from an operational perspective, whilst ensuring our extraordinarily high standards were retained. Working alongside the newly hired management team I positioned myself deep within the creative side of the business, driving our output and assisting new business.

It was a crazy time, with every new day bringing plenty 'sharp intake of breath' moments, but I wouldn't swap it for anything.

My 4 month secondment turned into 16 months, during which time we sourced, designed and refurbished our office and moved out of our temporary accommodation. Our start-up of 4 expanded to 50 people and a bunch of mostly exciting clients.
Operations Director
BBH London
2003 - September 2008 (5 years 8 months)
An internal facing role covering IT, office services, production facilities, production and all outsourced partner relationships.

In Autumn 2005 the role became more internationally focussed - following key roles in a number of global pitches I was promoted to Director of Group Operations, working into the agency’s then Chief Operating Officer, Gwyn Jones.

This brief covered all five BBH offices, however the main emphasis being Asia and the launch of our sixth office: BBH India.
Production Director
BBH London
September 1996 - May 2003 (6 years 8 months)
I joined BBH to work on Audi and Salvatore Ferragamo as a Senior Producer, but was soon promoted to Head of Production. I was invited onto the agency board in 2000.
Production Manager
Robson Brown
January 1991 - July 1996 (5 years 6 months)
Robson Brown were then the UK’s biggest and most successful independent agency. I stayed there for 6 years, working within their production department across various pieces of business in an early guise of an integrated producer.
Bingo caller
The Spanish City
April 1984 - September 1987 (3 years 5 months)
The best bingo caller since Peter Kay.

Blue number 10, Maggies Den.

Education

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