November 1, 2021 — The membership of the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame (MAHF) has elected its 2022 inductee: Stacey Singer, former Practice Lead at WPP
Stacey Singer’s 30-year career in medical advertising has seen her successfully lead and grow multiple agencies from a 3-person start-up to a 1,000 person turnaround. She has applied her operational excellence to agencies specializing in diverse disciplines. She grew Adient, a division of CommonHealth, to a large and successful agency in its own right. She co-founded and ran MBS/Vox, a highly innovative model and platform for analyzing and strengthening doctor-patient dialogue. With almost no medical education experience, she successfully managed HLS, CommonHealth’s medical education division. She utilized her flexibility and leadership strength as CommonHealth merged with other agencies in the WPP network as Managing Partner for Ogilvy CommonHealth. Later, she pioneered and managed Team Chemistry within the WPP network. It was one of the most complex, multi-disciplinary service models on behalf Johnson & Johnson, of the world’s largest healthcare companies.
2021 Inductees being honored
Maris Schilling, SVP/associate creative director at Kallir Phillips Ross and co-founder of Reagent; Risa Bernstein, co-founder and leader of Accel Healthcare and Flashpoint Medica; and Ronald Souza, president/COO of Rolf Werner Rosenthal and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather’s medical division will accept their awards at the 2022 Dinner since the 2021 Dinner was canceled due to the pandemic.
Risa Bernstein began her medical advertising career at Gross Townsend Frank Hoffman, rising from assistant account executive to managing director over the course of a decade. She put her renowned team-building skills to the ultimate test in the years that followed, co-founding Accel Healthcare (and serving as one of the primary architects of the merger that created Corbett Accel) and, later, Flashpoint Medica. Later in her career, she became one of the agency world’s most trusted and respected senior advisors, helping guide FCB Health as executive director and Calcium as executive director of strategy. Throughout her career, she worked on a range of A-list brands, ranging from Avastin and Herceptin to Rituxin and Klonopin Wafer. Her client roster included Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK, Procter & Gamble, and CooperVision.
Maris Schilling entered the industry as a secretary at Klemtner Advertising. Before long, her talent with words and strategy landed her a junior copywriter role at William Douglas McAdams and, shortly thereafter, a job as copy supervisor at Lavey/Wolff/Swift. Stints at Gross Townsend Frank Hoffmann (as VP, group copy supervisor) and Kallir Phillips Ross (first as creative director of the firm’s consumer division and then as associate creative director/SVP of the entirety of KPR) followed, before a hiatus during which she raised a family – and somehow found the time to establish a copy and concept consultancy. She continued to work through a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, jumping to LifeBrands as SVP, creative director, after concluding treatment and then co-founding Reagent. Her client experience included work on brands ranging from Tylenol to Duragestic.
Ron Souza started in the pharmaceutical business as a staff pharmacist at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, Mass., before moving to Connecticut and serving as director of pharmacy, central services and respiratory therapy at the Newington Children’s Hospital. After nine years in hospital pharmacy and administration, he entered the business proper in product manager/marketing director roles at Intra Products, USV/Revlon Pharmaceutical and Endo Laboratories. But it was in the agency world that he found his true calling, spending nearly two decades at New York-based companies. He started at J. Walter Thompson (becoming VP, account group supervisor in the firm’s medical division, Deltakos Healthcare Agency) and Rolf Werner Rosenthal (president and COO). When RWR was acquired by Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, he rose to the rank of medical division CEO and served as a senior member of the agency’s worldwide management council. Next came a stint leading Barnum Communications – ultimately renamed Barnum & Souza – and then head of his own consultancy, All’s Well. Prior to his retirement, he served as marketing director of a division of the American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists.
About the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame: The MAHF was founded in 1996 to preserve the history and heritage of the medical advertising profession as well as to recognize the industry’s most influential and respected forebears. Since then, MAHF has grown that mission to include recognition of past excellence in creative work, creation of educational resources and support of value of diversity, equity and inclusion in the industry.
The MAHF is supported by the industry it celebrates, primarily through its annual gala awards dinner. Seats and tables may be reserved at www.mahf.com/gala. Organizations wishing to support the institution may purchase half- and full-page ads in the Awards Dinner program. For information about advertising opportunities or other MAHF programming, please contact executive director Anne Gideon at anne@mahf.com.
The inductees will be honored on February 10, 2022 at a black-tie dinner at The Pierre Hotel in New York City. As the MAHF enters its third decade of service to the industry, it is pursuing more educational programs, as well as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. We hope that industry members will support us in our efforts and look forward to welcoming them at our Annual Awards Dinner on February 10th.
For more information, contact Anne Gideon, executive director, at anne@mahf.com