Veronica Parker-Hahn has joined Effie Worldwide as SVP of growth & innovation, a new position for the non-profit organization that's best known for the Effie Awards.
Parker-Hahn is charged with expanding the brand’s educational initiatives throughout the world, working with marketers across all stages of their careers to become more effective practitioners. Her first big projects will be launching the second U.S. program for the Effie Academy (early career professional development) in February and a future-focused Summit on effectiveness in May 2019. She will also work with partners to feature Effie case studies in programming, such as industry associations, business schools and media. In addition, she will oversee the Collegiate Effie program which is a hands-on learning experience for college students to create marketing campaigns for brands.
Parker-Hahn’s nearly 20 years of experience span both client and agency side, having worked at large holding company agencies such as FCB, DDB and BBDO on blue chip brands Pepsi, Nabisco and Mars, as well as smaller creative shops including mcgarrybowen and Droga5. Parker-Hahn became the first VP of marketing at Oscar Insurance, where she was responsible for launching and scaling the health insurance startup’s marketing program, before most recently consulting on marketing strategy for various early stage startups and established organizations.
“Effie is evolving to build a strong educational platform. With Veronica in place, we’ll be able to harness our resources to help marketers be more effective,” said Traci Alford, president and CEO at Effie Worldwide.
“The marketing industry is changing rapidly but every marketer, from startups to massive companies, have similar goals when it comes to marketing effectiveness. They want to know ‘does it work’,” said Parker-Hahn. “Effie is no different. We must adapt and evolve. I look forward to reintroducing the importance of having the Effie organization as a marketing resource for all kinds of marketers. And giving them the tools to better understand what effectiveness looks like.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More