MAM
Ogilvy names Lyndsey Corona US CEO in a bid to sharpen growth
NEW YORK: Ogilvy has tapped Lyndsey Corona as chief executive officer for the United States, putting a seasoned growth driver in charge of its offices across New York, Chicago, Washington DC and California. She will oversee advertising, PR, social and influence, customer experience and consulting, while steering talent, client value and market expansion. Corona steps into the role on January 1 and will report to Laurent Ezekiel, global CEO of The Ogilvy Group. She will also serve as executive sponsor for the agency’s Verizon business.
Ezekiel said Lyndsey has an instinct for connecting with clients, absorbing the complexity of their challenges and mobilising multidisciplinary teams to produce ideas that push businesses forward. He described her as entrepreneurial, versatile and primed to deliver both client impact and agency growth.
Corona said the strength of Ogilvy lies in the integration of all creative disciplines under one roof, powered by top-tier talent. She added that she is eager to partner with Ezekiel and the US leadership to unlock the next phase of the agency’s journey.
Corona brings more than 20 years of experience across global networks, holding companies and startups. She joined WPP in January as global growth lead for the Verizon account. Before that she was president and partner at independent agency Slap Global, where she landed AOR wins with SeatGeek, Petco and Eastern Mountain Sports and doubled revenue year on year. Her leadership helped Slap secure Effies Global Independent Agency of the Year and Ad Age Small Agency of the Year for two consecutive years.
She previously served as chief growth officer at McCann North America, where she also helped launch McCann Entertainment. Her earlier career included senior roles at TBWA New York, where she led business development and global work for Pernod Ricard and McDonald’s, and supported wins across brands including Kahlua, Planters and GlaxoSmithKline. Corona has also helped relaunch several agency brands such as Forsman and Bodenfors US, The and Partnership North America and 215 McCann San Francisco. Over the years she has advised marquee brands including McDonald’s, Microsoft, General Mills, Pernod Ricard and Puma.
Her mandate is clear: lift the agency’s momentum, sharpen its creative-commercial engine and push Ogilvy’s US business into a faster lane.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
