Sanja Partalo

Sanja is a SVP, Corporate Strategy & Digital Development at WPP, the world's largest marketing & advertising company ($22B Mkt Cap) servicing vast majority of Fortune 500. Sanja is responsible for developing & executing WPP's growth strategy through creation of new digital capabilities, strategic venture investments and partnerships. In short, she's responsible for 'what's next'. In addition to sourcing investments across emerging media and tech, Sanja leads commercial partnerships between WPP's $3B investment portfolio (Gimlet, Refinery29, VICE, AppNexus etc.) and operating companies. She oversees development, negotiation & execution of strategic partnerships with all major tech platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snap and Amazon, and leads the WPP Sitecore Alliance. She runs the WPP Digital Advisory Board and builds internal communities and investment cases around key digital transformation topics, such as application of artificial intelligence and voice platforms for marketing and commerce. She believes that marketing and media have been massively disrupted, and old playbooks no longer cut it. Prior to joining WPP in a strategic role, Sanja was an award-winning marketer with experience across industry leading brands including Google, Coca Cola, Spotify and Dell. Sanja holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she serves as an Adjunct Professor of Marketing and teaches a consistently oversubscribed "Brand Building in the Digital Age" course. She advises early stage startups and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on influence of tech on culture, media and consumer behavior. She was born in Bosnia and came to the US at the age of 16 through a refugee resettlement program.