Publicis Groupe appoints chief impact officer to steer global ESG commitments

Publicis Groupe has named Nannette LaFond-Dufour as its first chief impact officer.

Joining from McCann Worldgroup, where she was was global chief client officer and its first chief sustainability officer, LaFond-Dufour will report to Publicis Groupe chairman and chief executive Arthur Sadoun.

LaFond-Dufour will also join the group's management committee.

In the global role, she becomes responsible for the holding company's environmental, social and governance commitments. These include UN- and WWF-backed Science Based Targets Initiative climate goals; the holding company's agency-wide DEI action plans; and initiatives such as the Women's Forum for the Economy & Society and Working with Cancer, the latter a personal mission for Sadoun.

LaFond-Dufour will be based in Paris and lead a centralised team across the group's global environmental, social and governance community.

"Together, they will design and deploy a consistent strategy on impact, with clear and measurable KPIs, to enhance and expand Publicis' existing initiatives and implement new ones, at the service of its teams and its clients," the company said.

She will work alongside Agathe Bousquet, president of Publicis France and Directoire+ sponsor for ESG.

Prior to joining Publicis Groupe, LaFond-Dufour spent a dozen years at McCann Worldgroup, where she acted as president of the L'Oréal Paris beauty team. Before that, she worked at DDB Worldwide as a business director.

Sadoun said: "With the Directoire+, we are delighted to welcome Nannette to the group. Thanks to our transformation, we have been outperforming the industry on every business and financial KPI for the past four years.

"But we know that for our growth to be truly sustainable, on every front, it also needs to be responsible. That's why we have also worked to lead the way through our best-in-class ESG initiatives.

"With Nannette on board and her proven expertise in delivering impactful change with some of the world's biggest companies, we are confident we can take our ESG agenda even further, faster, for the good of our people, our clients, and our planet."

Publicis recently shook up its governance structure, merging its supervisory and management boards into a single entity – the Directoire. Then-chief executive and chairman Sadoun of the management board took on the same roles across the combined board.