Chief people officer Lindsay Pattison to leave WPP

Lindsay Pattison, the global chief people officer of WPP and a former global media agency chief executive, will be leaving the holding company in May.

In a memo to WPP leaders today (20 February), chief executive Mark Read said Pattison “has been a force in our industry” and thanked her for her contribution to WPP over the past 16 years.

WPP is recruiting for a successor to Pattison and aims to announce the incoming global CPO before Pattison's departure from the 111,000-strong agency group.

The next global CPO will be the fourth WPP has appointed in six years, following Pattison, Jennifer Remling who held the role between 2021 and 2023, and Jacqui Canney who was in the role from 2019 to 2021.

Pattison took over the global CPO role in January 2024, making the move from chief client officer which she had held since 2018.

Speaking about her time as CPO, Pattison said in the memo: “As many of you have experienced first-hand, I tend to do everything at a hundred miles an hour. Although that’s taken me a long way, at some point it’s probably sensible to slow down for a bit and take some time to figure out what’s next.

“Mark and I started talking seriously about me taking a break last year, but I also wanted to make sure we delivered on certain priorities absolutely critical for the future success of the business.”

These priorities include “bringing people back to the office environment more frequently to learn, create and collaborate” — a reference to the recently announced four-day return-to-office mandate; “investing in AI skills and the deployment of WPP Open; and ensuring we recruit and retain colleagues who represent the communities in which we live and the clients we serve – which not only reflects our values but is simply good for business”.

When it came to leaving WPP, Pattison said she will be taking some time out of work but will continue to be a shareholder in the group.

Pattison has been with WPP for 16 years. She joined in 2009 as the first UK chief executive of Maxus, taking the media agency from 30 people and billings of £40 million ($50.7 million) to a team of 200 with billings of £300 million ($380 million) by 2014. This was also the year that the agency won Media Week's Media Agency of the Year. 

In addition, Pattison became worldwide chief executive of Maxus Global later in 2014, before its merger with MEC to become Wavemaker. 

She was appointed as Group M’s first worldwide chief transformation officer in 2017 and led change programmes to help support group and agency restructures at the WPP media-buying division.

In addition to her work in media, Pattison is a former co-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council, a member of Meta’s Global Client Council and a former WACL president. 

Through the Walk The Talk initiative for female leaders at WPP she has sponsored more than 3000 WPP women for which Read deemed her to be “a true role model and a catalyst for change”.

Prior to WPP, Pattison worked for five years at PHD and has worked client-side at Sony Ericsson, after starting out at Young & Rubicam in a full-service environment.

Read said: “Thank you, Lindsay, for everything you have done for WPP, your energy, your high expectations of yourself and others, your sheer hard work and your support for me and the rest of the team. I will certainly miss you and want to put on the record my thanks for the support you have given me personally as well as to the company.”

WPP has undergone major restructuring, including internal mergers to create VML and Burson in the last financial year, and it is expected to report a modest decline in revenues when it reports annual results on 27 February.