co: is a strategy and creative design consultancy that builds organizations with purpose at their core. We believe that today’s most successful businesses are generative.
Generative organizations have momentum in their DNA.
They enrich, rather than exhaust the resources they depend on.
They generate more value for more people, more sustainably.
Consumers are 4-6 times more likely to purchase from purpose-driven companies 1
Purpose-driven companies report 30% higher levels of innovation 2
Purpose-driven companies have 40% higher levels of workforce retention than their competitors 3
Businesses are better able to survive crisis and have a higher chance of survival over a 15-year period 4
Prior to co:collective, Rosemarie was recognized as one of the preeminent advertising executives in the world. As Co-President of JWT North America, she famously led the 125-year-old advertising agency into the 21st century. Along with her partner Ty Montague, she transformed the agency and doubled profits which led to JWT being named Adweek’s 2009 Global Agency of the Year.
Previously as President of K&B, she grew it from a 30-person boutique to a 400-person, award-winning agency. She was named as one of the ‘100 most Influential Women in Advertising, by Advertising Age as well as one of the ‘100 People Who Make Advertising Great’ by the 4As.
In 2010, Rosemarie and her partners launched co:collective, a strategy and innovation consultancy, which uses a custom methodology called StoryDoing™ to drive top and bottom line growth. co:collective has been engaged by Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Macy’s, IBM, MetLife, Timberland, Microsoft, Infiniti, ACLU and E! Entertainment among others to develop strategy, iconic innovations, and purpose driven content.
In his previous career in the advertising business, Ty was also a restless agent of change. As Co-President and Chief Creative Officer of JWT North America, Ty and his business partner Rosemarie Ryan helped lead a 5-year transformation of the agency. This effort culminated with JWT being named Adweek magazine’s 2009 Global Agency of the Year – the first award of its kind for JWT and parent company, WPP. Prior to that Ty launched and helped build the New York office of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, ran the New York office of Wieden + Kennedy and worked at the New York office of Chiat Day.
Ty is an author and frequent speaker on the topics of innovation, business transformation and the power of story. His first book is True Story: How To Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business (2013 Harvard Business Press). Ty has been named one of the 50 Most Influential Creatives of the past 20 years by Creativity Magazine and Fast Company magazine named him one of the Top Ten Creative Minds in business.
Neil is the head of co:’s strategy offering, combining a unique mix of strategy consulting, innovation, and brand creation experience.
Prior to co:, Neil was Global Head of Strategy at Wolff Olins. There he redefined the strategy practice, tripling the size of the team and developing a new brand-led innovation offering. Neil also brought in new relationships with Microsoft and Target, leading to the creation of new brands such as Target up&up (a $1Bn + new owned brand) and a new generation of Windows experiences.
Before Wolff Olins, Neil was in Corporate Strategy at IBM, where he led new business creation from innovations grown by IBM Research. Prior to that, Neil was the lead Partner of IBM’s Media & Entertainment Strategy practice. Neil came to IBM through its acquisition of Mainspring, an Internet strategy and design firm where he led the New York office. Before Mainspring, Neil was a Partner in strategy consulting firm Kalchas, a breakaway from Bain and McKinsey.
Neil took a Fulbright Scholarship to UC Berkeley, completing an MA thesis on the novels of Joyce and Proust, and has a Double First in English from Oxford University.
Scott Blumenfeld is Head of Growth at co:collective, where he leads business development, marketing, and partnerships efforts. He ensures client needs and ambitions are deeply understood, and mobilizes our team to develop solutions that leverage purpose as a generative force for designing, building, and transforming businesses.
Prior to joining co:, Scott led business development efforts for brand consultancies large and small, serving as a trusted advisor to leaders seeking to unlock brand-led growth. He has worked across a broad range of industries, including healthcare, technology, financial services, professional services, and energy & environmental services, with clients like McKesson, B Capital, Xylem, Children’s National, Reworld, and Transact-CBORD to name a few.
A believer in second chances, Scott serves as an Advisory Board Member for the Tri-State Chapter of Defy Ventures—a nonprofit that reduces recidivism through educational programming focused on entrepreneurship and career readiness.
Scott holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing, with a minor in Entrepreneurship, from Lehigh University.
When he’s not working to help you grow your business, you can find Scott surfing (if you can call it that) or writing haikus.
Derek Newberry is Head of Organization and Culture at co:collective, where he helps senior leaders undertake large-scale culture transformations that enable them to bring their purpose to life and achieve their strategic goals.
Prior to joining co:, Derek was an Expert Consultant at BCG, where he worked with Fortune 500 clients to design and implement culture and capability-building programs to support large scale operating model transformations.
As a thought leader in BCG’s People Strategy team, he also drove the creation of new offerings and frameworks in the culture and change space, including supporting the development of BCG’s approach to defining the future of work.
Derek is also affiliated faculty in liberal and professional studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology. Derek delivers workshops on leadership influence, team-building and culture change at the Wharton School’s Aresty Institute for Executive Education. He was a faculty director for the organizational anthropology certificate in Penn’s online bachelor’s degree program, the first in the Ivy League. He also co-developed and launched a series of Coursera courses on team culture that have been taken by over 20,000 learners.
Derek is co-author of The Culture Puzzle: Harnessing the Forces that Drive Your Organization’s Success (Berrett-Koehler) and Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance (Wiley Press), a Soundview Best Business Book.
Derek hails from Oakland, CA and currently lives in Manhattan, NY with his wife and two daughters.
Steph Price is the Head of Creative Strategy at co: where she blends strategic thinking with copywriting magic to create compelling verbal identities for clients of all kinds. She believes deep collaboration between strategy and creative is co’s special sauce and is especially passionate about creating ideas with positive social impact — ones that not only help brands, but all of us.
Prior to co: Steph worked as an advertising writer and Creative Director in New York at Razorfish, Y&R, Lowe, and Ogilvy One working on brands such as IBM, MTV, Stella Artois, GMC, Chase, got milk? and many more. She also spent time in Phnom Penh, Cambodia working with the design thinking lab 17 Triggers, who uses creativity to trigger behavior change for social good in developing nations around the world.
Outside of co: she’s the Executive Director of an education non-profit called EIM Haiti — an adult English school and leadership institute in Port-au-Prince, which serves over 200 students and an all-Haitian staff. She’s committed to helping change the narrative on Haiti and has led countless trips to the island.
She also loves puns, 90’s TV theme songs, summiting mountains, and making high-end cuisine out of leftovers.
Katherine Perry, or KP as she is more commonly known, is the Head of Talent at co:. In her role, Katherine’s focus is not only to recruit the very best talent across all of co:’s business disciplines but to ensure their experience at co: is a positive one. Since joining co:, Katherine has built teams, and re-designed processes, bringing her human centered approach to people operations and experience.
co:’s expertise has been so powerful in accelerating innovation and transformation across the many global programs within customer experience, digital marketing and innovation at MetLife that we’ve partnered together on. One of the most important programs we worked with them on was a reinvention of our experience design process for the entire global enterprise – creating standard models for Journey Mapping, Design Thinking, and Prototyping across 40 markets.
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