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.”
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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