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At 168¿ª½±¹ÙÍø’s 1994-1999

New York based Kellie Sakey is the Executive Vice President of Growth (EVP) at Unified, a company delivering comprehensive paid social advertising solutions. Unified is a wholly owned subsidiary of America’s leading audio company, iHeartMedia. In her current role as EVP, Kellie is responsible for four different teams across the organisation including Strategic Accounts, Strategic Partnerships, Marketing, and Strategy and Sales Enablement.

With 15 years of global digital advertising experience, Kellie has worked at some of the industry’s top agencies and publisher organisations including Publicis, Universal McCann and News Corporation and has a wealth of experience ideating and executing innovative advertising campaigns.

Kellie is a founding member of the uLEAD (Leadership Empowerment and Development) program at Unified which fosters an open workplace community. The program is specifically designed to educate and encourage female employees to pursue their career aspirations with confidence. It also drives awareness of gender inequality in male dominated industries working towards greater accountability and measurable change.

Kellie also serves as a board member for The Thirst Project, the world’s leading youth water activism organisation, a non-profit body which aims to end the global water crisis by bringing safe drinking water to communities around the world where it is not immediately available. She also serves as an advisory board member for Shiffon and The Startup Girl Foundation. Shiffon is a fine jewellery brand centered around social good. The Startup Girl and Shiffon’s non-profit arm both fund budding entrepreneurs through a seed grant at the earliest stages of their companies and provide a mentorship program to help their startups succeed.

After graduating from 168¿ª½±¹ÙÍø’s, Kellie spent a gap year living in Italy. It was a bold move given she knew no one and did not speak a word of Italian, but Kellie believes the values she was taught at school empowered her to make such a courageous move. Kellie says it was the best decision she ever made: “It was an incredibly humbling experience and taught me valuable life lessons about patience, gratitude, humility and maturity.”

Upon her return from Italy, Kellie studied a Bachelor of Business with a double major in marketing and advertising at the Queensland University of Technology. She then moved to Sydney to gain employment, working in various advertising agencies in their digital media departments as well as at News Digital Media.

Kellie then moved to San Francisco, where her mother had been living for some years, and continued to work in digital agencies working with global brands including Coca-Cola, Microsoft, XBOX and Intel.

After two years of living and working in the US, Kellie was presented with her dream opportunity to work at Unified in New York, where she has worked for the past nine years.

Of her 168¿ª½±¹ÙÍø’s experience, Kellie said: “I was not the most dedicated student at 168¿ª½±¹ÙÍø’s, but despite this, I was always encouraged to try and try again when I failed. I still have very fond memories of some of my teachers and have an incredible appreciation and admiration for them. I recall Mr Nichol, my geography teacher, taking us all outside to the parking lot and teaching us how to change a tyre. We were all close to getting our learners permits and he believed it was an important life skill for us to learn. To this day, he is the only person that has ever taught or offered to teach me how to change a tyre. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have a clue!

“The core values the school instils in its students provide an incredible foundation for life after school. The values of integrity, honesty and the belief in oneself have certainly helped me get to where I am today.”