Media in Canada’s annual Media Leader of the Year program is being marked, once again, with celebratory profiles about each leader-in-the-running for 2024. Over the next few days, we’ll publish the articles for each nominee, with the overall winner decided by the editorial team and announced at the Media Innovation Awards on November 27. Today, let’s take a look at finalist Samantha Kelley at Touché! Check out this year’s other nominees, Karel Wegert and Karine Courtemanche. 

There aren’t many CEOs that start at the bottom of their organization and climb their way to the top. But that’s essentially what Samantha Kelley has done at Touché!. She started as a media strategist, and has now just completed her first year as Touché’s CEO. But her rise to the top gave Kelley the perspective needed to understand Touché’s potential, and inspire others to see it, too.

“I like to be a people-first leader,” she says. “Talent is our most valuable asset.”

In fact, Kelley’s first focus in building and leading the Touché! team has been to advocate for diversity and inclusion. To that end, she’s set up a number of programs at the agency. She’s added a “diversity” and “women in leadership” division to its mentorship program, which connects emerging talent with senior managers. Through a partnership with Jelly Academy, a division of Jelly Marketing, Touché now offers internship opportunities to Indigenous people. Plus, Kelley has encouraged managers to participate in training by Nüense, a firm specializing in neuroinclusion, and has offered accommodations to employees with diverse realities.

“Diversity empowers creativity and inclusivity in our product,” she says. “We’re always looking for people who are curious and we invest a lot in [their] education. Being a curious person is kind of where we start.”

As a result of Kelley’s focus, 61% of the Touché! team is now comprised of women, 11% of persons with different abilities and 20-plus cultural origins; while 89% agree that the agency is committed to and supportive of diversity; 92% agree that they are treated fairly and with respect; and 83% agree that the agency fosters an inclusive work and team culture for employees of all backgrounds, according to a recent internal survey.

“Samantha believes in the next generation and does everything she can to help them grow,” says Rosemarie St-Amand, marketing manager, Touché! Canada. “She has set up numerous training programs for all employees, from day one to management level. These programs bring together over 100 training courses on the hard and soft skills of the media discipline.”

But perhaps where Kelley sees the greatest potential is in local media. She was a founding member of the Canadian Media Manifesto Task Force, a group of industry professionals whose objective is to encourage advertisers, agencies and media vendors to support local media through structuring programs. As such, Kelley has advocated hard for Canadian media. And since that push began, Touché! has been calculating the proportion of its investments in local media. In 2023, 26% of the agency’s digital investments and 100% of its traditional investments went towards Canadian media.

With her guidance, Touché’s clients see the potential of Canadian media, too. “We’ve been able, over the past several years, to demonstrate that Canadian media garners results and we’ve run a variety of tests with our clients,” she says, adding that their findings have shown the attention to Canadian media is more than twice that of global media.

But in order to get clients on board, she has to see things from their perspective. She pushes her team to be more than planners for their clients. “We need to be better business partners,” she says. “Change has never been this fast, and it’s never going to be this slow again. That’s true for us and our clients. We need to bring them along with us.”