D&AD: CEO Patrick Burgoyne quits, COO takes over with help from senior management team

D&AD is a charity devoted to stimulating, celebrating and enabling excellence in commercial creativity, serving the global creative community with our awards, festivals and learning programs.

Due to the dramatic reduction in revenues during the pandemic,  D&AD,  which is in part an events company, have been badly hit.

As a consequence, a survival plan was developed to enable D&AD to do three things; first, continue to run the D&AD Awards to our usual high standard. Second, to continue to support the emerging cohort of creative talent as it seeks opportunities in the advertising and design industry, through the New Blood program. And third, rebuild our reserves so that we can reshape D&AD for a different, primarily digital, future.

D&AD informed:

A key part of that plan includes a significant reduction in our staff numbers; and this also means we have had to reconfigure our senior management team. Our CEO, Patrick Burgoyne, has unselfishly volunteered to relinquish his role and step down. We thank him for his service, first as a Trustee and, since December 2019, as our CEO.

Dara Lynch, our long-serving COO, will lead the company, ably supported by the senior management team, President Kate Stanners, Deputy President Ben Terret and our Board of Trustees. Tim Lindsay will also continue to play an active role as Chairman.