Nur El Shami has been named chief operating officer of Grey New York, a newly created role at the agency. El Shami is the latest C-suite appointment made by Grey NY CEO Amber Guild, who assumed her role in December 2021. Most recently, El Shami was COO at WaitWhat, an award-winning media invention company that builds premium IP.
El Shami and Guild now reunite at Grey. The two worked together previously at The New York Times, leading transformation of the digital branded content division, T Brand Studios, along with the business transformation of the global advertising division
Long before entering the creative and media business, El Shami began her career in the fashion industry, holding various positions in marketing and production at labels in Milan, Paris, and London before founding her own boutique fine-art platform in London with a mission to support and promote emerging artists via alternative patronage models.
She later moved to New York to begin consulting for brands in the arts and luxury industry and producing cultural events.
In her newly appointed role, El Shami will focus on building a strong yet nimble operational foundation that will enable people at Grey to do their best work, and creates space for the kind of diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture needed to fuel innovation.
El Shami is known for a people-centric approach to operations, with a proven track record of navigating complex, highly matrixed structures across a variety of industries. Her diverse and entrepreneurial career background enables her to quickly identify organizational patterns, develop change-management roadmaps, and execute on them–all with a success-based approach built on empathy and creativity. She’s a tireless advocate for people, always seeking out opportunities to partner with colleagues to help boost the quality, efficiency, and rewarding nature of their work.
El Shami’s interest in empowering talent to achieve their fullest potential is something that, since 2020, she also pursued as the Chair of the Board of Scholarship Plus, a nonprofit organization supporting extraordinary first-generation college students from low income families receive higher education, fully paid and debt free.
Guild said, “I came to Grey New York because of its extraordinary legacy of constant reinvention, spanning 105 years. And with Nur El Shami, I have a partner who is experienced in driving transformation and can help enact the next phase of change for this studio by accelerating our ability to create a workplace culture where all people can do their best work and where we deliver smarter, faster and more creatively for our clients.”
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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