Lisa Smith has been named the brand new President of D&AD for 2025/2026, bringing one of many world’s most revered design leaders to the helm of the worldwide non-profit.
Based mostly in New York, Lisa takes on the function at a pivotal time for the inventive industries, succeeding Kwame Taylor-Hayford and signalling D&AD’s dedication to each its worldwide development and its mission to rejoice excellent inventive work and nurture rising expertise.
An extended-time D&AD award winner, advisory board member and trustee, Lisa is already deeply related to the organisation and its Shift programme – the free evening college that helps self-made creatives break into the trade.
Her appointment displays D&AD’s perception within the energy of design to drive change at a second when creativity is being reshaped by expertise, tradition and the collapse of conventional boundaries between disciplines.
Alongside her new function, Lisa not too long ago joined Unusual Artistic Studio as World Chief Design Officer, the place she helps embed design on the coronary heart of the company’s tradition and output. Even on this quick time, she has already influenced main tasks, drawing on a profession constructed on daring, high-profile work.
Earlier than becoming a member of Unusual, she held senior inventive management roles at Jones Knowles Ritchie, the place she drove international rebrands for notable purchasers akin to Walmart, Burger King, Paramount, and Uber – work that earned her quite a few awards and a spot on Quick Firm’s Most Artistic Folks checklist in 2021.
In taking over the presidency, Lisa acknowledges the dimensions of change going through the trade. “There is a elementary transformation occurring – pushed by rising applied sciences, shifting cultural dynamics, and a redefinition of what ‘creativity’ even means,” she says. “The trade should embrace adaptability over custom, spend money on steady studying, champion non-linear expertise pathways, and foster extra inclusive, cross-functional collaboration.”
D&AD Chairman Tim Lindsay describes her as “an distinctive mix of expertise, creativity, and management,” praising her capacity to bridge the worlds of design, promoting and model. With Lisa on the helm, D&AD enters its subsequent chapter with a pacesetter whose profession proves that design can drive enterprise development, spark tradition and stay unmistakably human.”
