Diana Marszalek 15 Jul 2021 // 11:01AM GMT
NEW YORK — Finn Partners is switching up its health practice’s senior leadership as part of a larger effort by the agency to grow the group’s size and reach.
Managing partner Kristie Kuhl has been promoted to global health practice leader, assuming the oversight responsibilities that until now have belonged to global health chair Gil Bashe.
Bashe, meantime, will focus on efforts to grow the operation including acquisitions, agencywide strategy and making healthcare comms part of other disciplines’ offerings.
Kuhl has been part of Finn’s healthcare practice since Bashe launched it in 2015, joining as the practice’s first senior partner before being elevated to managing partner in 2019. She and Bashe also spent more than a decade working together at Makovsky, where Bashe served as health practice director and Kuhl was a senior, and later executive, VP.
“We have been colleagues and partners for 20 years. It’s a very collaborative relationship,” Bashe said. “Kristie' s superpower is really bringing things together and making them strong.”
The leadership changes are the latest in a series of moves by Finn in recent years to significantly expand the size and global reach of the firm including its health practice, whose global headcount is up to 175.
Earlier this month, the firm acquired Agency Ten22, which specializes in health information technology. Finn Partners also bought healthcare specialists Lazar Partners in the US and Medical & Health Consulting in Paris in 2019.
Finn is growing other parts of its business as well. In April, Finn purchased digital marketing agency MintTwist. The move marked Finn’s fifth acquisition in London in the past four years, coming on the heels of financial services firm Moorgate Communications and consumer and lifestyle agency ZPR in 2019; travel and lifestyle consultancy Brighter Group in 2018; and B2B specialist ABI in 2017.
In 2019, Finn also acquired Hong Kong travel specialist CatchOn and 45-person Boston-based Small Army.
In May, Finn bought back Stagwell Group’s minority stake in the firm, putting an end to the companies’ four-plus year financial partnership that enabled Finn Partners to grow by 2020 into a $110 million operation with 750 people across 20 offices.