40 Under 40 2023: Rebecca Nadilo, Iris

Rebecca Nadilo

Managing director
Iris
Singapore

From agencies to the client side, from the US and back to APAC, Rebecca Nadilo creates lasting impact on businesses, clients and the people she encounters. Five months into her managing director role at Iris Singapore, Nadilo has defined a new growth team and strategy, proving its success in recent new business wins such as Far East Malls and HBO Max. 

Within the first four weeks, she spent 30 minutes with every one of the 59 employees at the agency office, listening to their viewpoints, concerns and ideas. After that, she reshuffled the team, promoted and reallocated people to new positions, which highly raised staff potential and morale inside the agency. Its Singapore office has witnessed increased presence in the office, growth in accounts and volunteers for the Culture Vultures team, Iris Women and the Growth Squad.

As an agency leader, she believes her role is elevating everyone to their full potential and bringing out their absolute best. She also emphasises cultivating a supportive environment that encourages people to take risks and explore uncharted ideas, building teams and fostering a culture of creative adventure. Through open communication and leading by example, she is a doer as much as a visionary, treating everyone the same way regardless of rank or file, and communicates with authenticity, honesty and kindness.

Nadilo cares about making lasting impact and changes, as her LinkedIn posts on ‘Loud Leaving’ supporting the idea that hours spent at a desk does not equate to productivity, received 19,000 impressions and over 430 engagements. The post resonated with all professionals, but particularly with working parents who want to get home to spend time with their children. 

As a mother of a two-year-old in a demanding position, Nadilo hopes to create an industry-wide impact for other women managing family and work. At Iris Singapore, she immediately changed the maternity and paternity policy to be more progressive and abolish non-inclusive stipulations, such as same-sex marriage, married or single, local or foreign. 

She has also reinvigorated Iris Women, an internal initiative designed to ‘unleash the inner boss’ of Iris Women, as well as an external capability to improve the representation of women in Adland.

As a strategist, she also created the Singapore Strategy Group, a newly formed club in Singapore for agency and media strategists, which has 408 members now.  

Starting her early career from Australia, Nadilo has worked across APAC and the US. She was the youngest senior vice president in BBDO New York history at the age of 27. She moved to Singapore nine years ago from BBDO New York to BBDO Singapore and then became chief strategy officer of Wunderman Thompson in 2019 before leading the APAC strategy team of Meta in 2022. By all accounts, it seems Nadilo is only just getting started.