NEW YORK — James Nicholas Kinney has joined Ogilvy as global chief diversity, equity & inclusion officer and chief people officer for North America, bringing nearly two decades of D&I and human resources experience to the role.

As the firm’s global DE&I lead, Kinney succeeds Donna Pedro who, after 14 years in the role, is assuming a role with holding company WPP.

In North America, Kinney also will oversee all aspects of talent management, recruitment, learning & development and wellbeing. He will be working with Jag Dhanji, who was recently promoted to global chief people officer, and Devika Bulchandani, recently named CEO of Ogilvy North America.

Kinney brings expertise gleaned from spending the last 18 years working in D&I and HR leadership roles. Most recently, Kinney was the ad agency Mother’s chief talent officer and was VP of people at Giant Spoon before that.

Kinney is the latest in a string of recent hires by Andy Main, the former Deloitte executive who replaced John Seifert as Ogilvy's global CEO in June.  

In December, Julianna Richter, whose long industry career includes serving as Edelman’s US chief operating officer, was named Ogilvy’s global CEO of public relations & influence, assuming a role that had been vacant for nearly nearly two years.