Singleton Beato has been promoted to the brand new role of global EVP, chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at McCann Worldgroup.
Beato joined McCann Worldgroup as chief diversity and engagement Officer in 2017. In this role, she was responsible for designing and leading strategic workforce diversity and engagement solutions that drive business performance and innovation across McCann Worldgroup agencies.
“As we move forward into 2021, it is critical that we have the right people at the forefront of our senior leadership team making key decisions about our business and our future,” said Bill Kolb, chairman and CEO, McCann Worldgroup. “There is another discipline that is equally as important as strategy, creative, account leadership and production, and that is diversity and engagement, which is my top priority moving forward. D&E is a business discipline that has evolved to reside outside the purview of HR and talent, influencing not only the way we work together, but the products and solutions we create for our client partners.”
In this expanded global role, Beato will report directly to Kolb as McCann Worldgroup pushes forward an aggressive approach to make the systemic and structural changes necessary to ensure employees, as well as clients, and the consumers the agency’s clients serve, feel seen, heard, represented and respected in the workplace, the marketplace and their communities.
Beato joined McCann Worldgroup as one of the industry’s most respected and well-known diversity executives, recognized within the advertising community and beyond. She has developed McCann’s enterprise-wide strategy and guiding philosophy of Conscious Inclusion, complete with a comprehensive framework to guide and align McCann’s network-wide D&E efforts.
Beato is also the visionary and chief architect of McCann Worldgroup’s annual Day For Meaning (DFM), a first-of-its kind global change management model and global activation. The event is designed to bring clarity to the network’s individual and collective accountability to disrupt and shift daily behaviors and decisions that have traditionally been barriers to inclusion and instill the ethos of creativity in each of McCann Worldgroup’s agencies that is critical to the future of the network’s success.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More