Maja Pawinska Sims 19 Sep 2022 // 6:46AM GMT
LONDON — Strategic and creative advisory firm Blurred has hired three new senior team members as it builds out its corporate offer.
Research and insights specialist Veronica Patton-Cemm (pictured) joins Blurred’s management team from Intent Health, where she was a director. She started her career at PwC and also worked at Teneo for almost five years.
In the newly-created role of consulting director, insights, Patton-Cemm’s brief is to further embed research, analytics and insights into the business, as well as working with co-founder and chief strategy officer Stuart Lambert to develop new products, and consulting with clients on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Patton-Cemm said: “I’ve admired the work of Blurred for some time, and now as part of the team, I look forward to providing clients with leading edge research and evidence-based insights. I also know how much the firm values DEI. It is part of Blurred’s unique DNA, and it is central to my career.”
At the same time, Karen Noctor joins Blurred’s senior team as a principal consultant. Most recently a communications director at Smarts, she previously spent nearly eight years at Golin.
Noctor will combine her FMCG experience – including six years with Mondelez and a total of more than 10 years with Diageo – with the consultancy’s ESG and purpose (ESGP) offer to advise FMCG clients.
Malini Parkash also joins Blurred as a senior consultant from Instinctif Partners, where she worked across its corporate and ‘Reinventing Responsibility’ teams, including focusing on sustainability challenges.
Parkash was recently selected for the second intake of The Xec. leadership scheme, developed by BME PR Pros for UK-based Black, Asian, mixed race and ethnic minority communications professionals.
Blurred CEO and co-founder Nik Govier said: “Although Blurred focuses squarely on ESGP, we’re continuing to build out our offer with more industry- and skills-based expertise. Veronica, Karen and Malini are great new additions and have the knowledge and expertise, as well as the values and passion, to push Blurred even further in terms of helping our clients become the best corporate versions of themselves.”
The firm, named as PRovoke Media’s best UK consultancy to work for this year, has also this week published its latest DEI data, which it does every six months after setting out targets around ethnic and gender representation in 2020. Currently, 36% of Blurred’s team is of ethnic origin (working towards 40% in 2023), with 18% of senior roles held by colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds (with a target of 20% by 2023 and 30% by 2026). The core team is 76% female, with women holding 71% of senior roles, against an ongoing commitment of 50% for each.
Govier said: “To those who say there isn’t enough strong ethnically diverse talent in the industry, we simply say you’re not looking hard enough. We’re continuing to hire from across a broad spectrum of society, and ensuring that we properly nurture and support our own talent so that everyone has the potential to be a future leader.
“That said, at Blurred, we want to go beyond championing diversity in terms of race and gender – which of course remain vital – to consider broader issues of intersectionality. As such, ongoing, we will also measure ourselves against socio-economic diversity to ensure that we also purposefully seek out and develop talent from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.”