Women to Watch Greater China 2022: Nicky Huang, MediaCom

Nicky Huang

General manager
MediaCom Taiwan
Taipei

Since Nicky Huang was appointed general manager in 2018, many new brands including Levis, Harley Davidson, Pandora and Xiaomi have been added to MediaCom's Taiwan market portfolio. 

Of note, Huang won the Uber Eats business in Taiwan, helping it develop a new ‘pilot market’ in 2020. The brand’s joint success with MediaCom in Taiwan in turn helped the agency build on their foundation with further global contracts in 2021.

Huang also assisted Adidas, which had a more conservative ecommerce presence in Taiwan, to start a digital investment plan in 2020. This not only led to an increase in digital budget, but helped her client accelerate their digital transformation overall.

Another example of Huang’s direct contribution to the business is how one of her clients, Hoyu, followed her from Maxus to MediaCom and built a long-term partnership in the past five years. Rupert McPetrie, CEO of MediaCom Greater China, credited the Taiwan office’s “stellar performance” in the region to Huang and praised her “clear sense of purpose to take care of and grow our people and grow the business”.

In 2020 when Covid hit, Huang did not cut jobs or personnel costs to achieve business targets. Instead she vowed to protect her staff and address their needs. To do this, she adopted ‘Amber’, an AI management system developed by MediaCom to read and provide immediate feedback on employees’ job satisfaction reports.

In the face of the pandemic, she also joined MediaCom’s global Wellbeing Allies Programme and became a mental health counsellor in the Taiwan office. As general manager, she has also emphasised development around ‘soft skills’, such as conflict management and presentation skills.

As a woman business leader, Huang has always been particularly concerned about gender equality. Within her organisation, she has ensured salaries are equitable regardless of gender. The HR department also regularly analyses the gender ratio of the management at her request. Huang is a performance-driven team leader who truly believes in the creed of ‘people first, better results’.