CEO Sharlene Wu exits Grey and AKQA China

Sharlene Wu, CEO of Grey and AKQA China, will be departing her role at the end of May, as announced via a LinkedIn post. While she did not reveal her next career steps, she mentions that she has relocated to California with her family. 

Wu reflected on her journey in the advertising industry, which took her from Taiwan to Shanghai. She expressed gratitude to her colleagues and teams at Ogilvy Taiwan, JWT Advertising, BBDO Worldwide, Proximity Worldwide, Grey, and AKQA, highlighting her experience working with top brands such as Nike, Apple, Visa, Tencent, Unilever, Alibaba, and Volvo.

Wu joined Grey Group China as CEO in 2021, taking over from Jeff Kwek, who left the agency after 18 months due to family reasons. In 2022, Grey Group China won the Content Marketing Agency of the Year award, and Wu was recognised as 'Agency Head of the Year' in Greater China at Campaign’s Agency of the Year Awards. 

WPP announced the merger of AKQA and Grey to form AKQA Group in 2020. In 2024, AKQA and Grey merged operations in five markets, with Grey leading the merged operations in China. Following this merger, Wu became the CEO of both Grey and AKQA China.

Before joining Grey, Wu served as the CEO of Proximity China, where she spent 13 years. She started her career in 2000 with WPP’s JWT Wings in Taiwan and later worked at Ogilvy. After a brief period at JWT Shanghai in 2006, she joined BBDO Shanghai in 2007 as a business director, marking the beginning of her career with the Omnicom Group.

Starting as general manager of Proximity Shanghai, she rose through the ranks and in 2015 was named managing director for both BBDO and Proximity Shanghai. During her tenure, she built and oversaw speciality teams across digital planning, data analytics, social media, and digital production while managing major client accounts. Her achievements led to a promotion to CEO of Proximity China in 2017. In May 2020, Wu became CEO following the merger of Proximity and RAPP in China.

Wu’s announcement follows Grey’s and Ogilvy’s merger to form the Ogilvy Group earlier this month. As part of WPP’s ongoing consolidation efforts, Grey was recently merged into Ogilvy, splitting from AKQA, while GroupM agencies have been unified under a single P&L.