We think politically,
act creatively.

Lenny Stern,
Co-Founder & Partner

Lenny started his career in the competitive, zero-sum world of politics. As one of the co-founders at SS+K, he turned his unbridled passion for winning and making a positive impact on the world into a career helping established and insurgent brands and purpose-driven organizations navigate, create, and lead meaningful change.

Using a unique mix of political strategy and creative thinking, he’s helped counsel countless brands and leaders through their most defining moments. From helping Delta rebuild itself into one of world’s top airlines post-bankruptcy, to helping disruptor brands like Jet.com and Honest Tea take on their respective “Goliaths.” He’s counseled two of the world’s leading financial institutions to transform their business in moments of crisis, helped Pfizer enhance its purpose-driven reputation, and even helped position Iceland as the top holiday destination post-COVID pandemic. He led SS+K’s partnership with Creative Artists Agency and helped build one of the world’s leading entertainment marketing agencies, doing award winning work for brands like Coca Cola, GM, and Chipotle. All the while, he has kept one foot in the political and advocacy world. He has helped lead SS+K’s work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for President Obama's successful ’08 and ’12 campaigns where SS+K was the Youth Agency of Record, as well the agency's work for the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign work and for LeBron James’ organization More Than a Vote.

Lenny holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Duke University, a frequent lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications and has taught competitive strategy at the Yale School of Management. He is also a National Board member of Communities In Schools (CIS), the nation's largest and most effective dropout prevention organization. He lives in Chappaqua, New York, with his wife Lauren, and is the proud father of three daughters.

Rob Shepardson,
Co-Founder & Partner

As one of the founders of SS+K, Rob has spent over 30 years working in politics, marketing and brand consulting. Rob has led the firm’s work for a diverse set of cause, issue and corporate clients, including HBO, The New Yorker, Starbucks, President Obama’s campaigns in both 2008 and 2012, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Lyft, LeBron James’s voting rights group More Than A Vote, Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-childhood obesity campaign Let’s Move!, LiveStrong, Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and many others.

In the spring of 2014, President Obama appointed Rob to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Rob is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of Neighbors Link, a founding board member of Business Forward, and on the advisory boards of Hip-Hop Public Health and Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.

Rob developed and taught a graduate-level course on health-issue advocacy at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. He is on the advisory board of the Center for Health Communication at Harvard’s School of Public Health. Rob has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He holds a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College, where he graduated with a double major in government and biology. At F&M, he was a four-year starting quarterback and All-American. He was inducted into F&M’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1990.

Mark Kaminsky,
Co-Founder & Partner

Mark was working on a U.S. government-sponsored program in Moscow to promote private enterprise and liberal values in the former Soviet Union – yeh, that didn’t quite work out – when he returned stateside to launch an agency with S+S in 1993.

Over 28 (!) years later, he is the agency’s lead partner on the SS+K’s Mount Sinai Health System team. Mark has developed work for Jackson Insurance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Commonwealth Bank (Australia), Delta, Wells Fargo, the Environmental Defense Fund, Audi, E*Trade and other clients. He conceived of the “Most Honest City in America” campaign for Honest Tea, which won a Gold Lion at Cannes. He spearheaded the College Board’s ”Don’t Forget Ed” campaign to highlight education issues during the 2012 Presidential election campaign. That effort included The New York Times-covered installation on the National Mall featuring 857 empty desks – a haunting representation of the number of high school students dropping out every hour of every school day. Back in 2008, Mark and his team launched “This is Public Health” to spark wider awareness of the importance of that field. The campaign, by the Association of Schools of Public Health, spawned copycat campaigns around the world. 13 years later, it’s still running.

Before Moscow, Mark worked at agencies you’ve likely never heard of because they were devoured by soulless holding companies. He is an Iowan, a Wisconsin Badger and lives in Sleepy Hollow.

Nadja Bellan-White,
CEO

With over three decades of experience, Nadja’s career has spanned across the globe. Prior to joining SS+K, she was Global CMO of VICE Media Group, where she oversaw enterprise brand strategy. Previously, she was Executive Partner and WPP Team Leader for Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, where she led brand transformation for Unilever across beauty and personal care — focusing specifically on Dove — and led behavior change for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation globally. She also led brand work for American Express, LG Electronics, IKEA North America, Coca-Cola, Siemens and Safaricom/Vodafone. In 2014, she was promoted to CEO of Ogilvy Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, where she managed business across the continent.

Nadja's leadership is characterized by her belief in the power of brands to be brave and make a real change, especially during tumultuous times. She advocates for a problem-solving approach that leans into her digital and global expertise.

Among her many accolades and recognitions, she received AdColor’s Legend Award for excellence in advertising, media and communications, was recognized in 2019 and 2022 as one of Savoy Magazine’s top 100 Women in Corporate America, and was named to AdAge's European leaders list.

Kate Rothen,
Partner, Australia Business

Kate is a Partner overseeing SS+K’s work in Australia. Since moving to Sydney from New York in 2019, she’s developed a taste for Vegemite and Aussie-rules football (which she revels in calling “the footy”).

Outside of questing for quokka selfies, Kate’s work in Australia brings together experience in public affairs, creative advertising, and agency management. Back in New York, Kate was partner and Chief Operating Officer, responsible for turning SS+K’s mission into action. She previously served as our Head of Account Services and first Director of Social Media. In 2011, Kate was selected by The Impact Center as a Women’s Leadership Fellow. She sits on the Board of the City College of New York’s Branding and Integrated Communications Master’s degree program, where she has also taught.

Before joining SS+K in 2005, Kate worked through the ranks in the PR and public affairs world handling economic development for the Dutch government at Ruder Finn, helping launch Splenda at RF Binder Partners, and helping Airbus speak American (and vice versa) at AGG International. Kate is a graduate of Amherst College, where she learned good English and bad French.

Stevie Archer,
CCO

A copywriter by trade, Stevie wrote her first book at the age of six on her parents’ typewriter. The book sales were abysmal, so she quickly switched her sights to advertising. She has since spent her career creating award-winning campaigns for clients across a multitude of categories.

In her tenure at SS+K, she developed the “Looks Like You Need Iceland” campaign, which has generated billions of impressions for Icelandic tourism, steered the rebranding of the Mount Sinai Health System through the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and helped LeBron James’s More Than A Vote organization recruit 40,000 poll workers just a month before the 2020 election.

In addition to being a strategically-oriented brand builder, she has a particular knack for earned-first ideas that transcend media—whether that means executing interactive livestreams, developing digital and physical experiences, or socially-driven campaigns. Prior to joining SS+K, she created Starbucks’ most-watched social video, developed a digital tool for Sherwin-Williams that has been used to create more than 1 million paint palettes, and overhauled the Travelocity Roaming Gnome’s social channels landing him accolades by Twitter.

Her work has been awarded by Cannes, One Show, Effies, Art Director’s Club, and D&AD and has been featured by the TODAY show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fast Company, Forbes, NY Times, and NPR.

Andrew Acampora, CFO

Andy has spent the past 27 years applying his vast financial knowledge within the advertising industry. As a product of a Big Four Accounting firm and 17 years [of] working in various capacities within the Omnicom network, Andy has been able to bring his wealth of knowledge and diversity of experience as a CPA and consummate businessman to help lead SS+K during his tenure of 10+ years.

As a CPA, Andy’s audit and wealth of experience learning all the operational aspects of advertising and applying that knowledge have enabled SS+K to provide our clients with the most efficient and effective financial arrangements and staffing teams.

Andy spent 27 years raising his family in Morristown, NJ, and is now very excited about his upcoming move into the West Village. He has two children, Michael and Meghan, who coincidentally have followed in his footsteps by starting their careers in the finance field.

Kevin Skobac,
Managing Director, Strategy

Kevin leads SS+K’s Strategy Group, a diverse team responsible for driving a wide range of brand, creative, and business strategies for the agency’s unconventional mix of consumer, enterprise, and issue-advocacy clients.

In his career, Kevin has helped elect presidents, reduce teen drug use, impact tech policy, transform aging companies and birth new ones, and even start a global academic debate over the origins of pizza.

Kevin’s unbridled passion for media and technology innovation led him to co-found SS+K Labs, create a disruptive augmented reality device for people living with Parkinson’s disease, and develop a popular-but-short-lived social media search engine.

John Swartz,
Managing Director, Production + Operations

Amy Frisch,
Managing Director, Client Services

A seasoned brand leader with a strong creative pedigree and keen strategic sensibility, Amy thrives on leading a team to deliver ambitious ideas that put brands in culture and tackle new frontiers. At SS+K, she is responsible for leading our work for Mount Sinai Health System, Wells Fargo's Summer Food Bank program, and Girls Who Code's new initiative, The Marshall Plan for Moms.

Amy has contributed to award-winning work at Ogilvy, Fallon and J. Walter Thompson, and with blue chips, upstarts and challenger brands in categories as diverse as beauty (Beekman 1802), spirits (Smirnoff, Cuervo), retail (JCPenney, Toys R Us, Timberland), packaged goods (Unilever, Kimberly Clark), frozen food (Nestlé), media (TIME and FORTUNE Magazines and A&E Networks) financial services (American Express, Conseco, SunTrust Bank) and wireless (Virgin Mobile). More recently, she worked with founder-led brands and in the earned and owned media spaces of digital, experiential and social. Most notably, she led an integrated brand, packaging and website redesign for independent beauty brand Beekman 1802 as it focused on turbocharging its direct-to-consumer beauty business.

Amy is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, where she double majored in American Civilization and English and American Literature. Mom to two sons, she now spends far too much time watching and talking about baseball as a result.

Melanese Richens-Moody,
Director of Human Resources

Melanese has over 25 years of Human Resources experience working in various creative service industries, balancing the expectations of employees while supporting the mission of the organization. With her zig-zag of experiences, Melanese brings a good understanding of how to align fragmented portfolio businesses from a people and process perspective while simultaneously managing and creating teams using a “hands-on, empathetic and leads by example” leadership style. Starting in Chicago as a mere production coordinator at Foot, Cone & Belding, she eventually moved to New York landing positions at the award-winning broadcast design firm Pittard Sullivan as Head of HR and Operations. She then moved to hold classes at FutureBrand, J. Walter Thompson, and the boutique advertising agency Gardner Nelson & Partners, where she worked for 14 years. Her next challenge was that of Global Director of HR at Great Bowery, a global talent management agency in the business of fashion and luxury image-making. As a member of the global leadership team, Melanese was responsible for transforming the HR function across the globe by creating process alignment and harmonization across multiple acquisitions in the US, UK, Germany and Australia. Melanese joined M&C Saatchi in September 2019 where she is responsible for leading HR initiatives for the US agencies, including SS+K.

She’s a member of WorldatWork, IAW (International Women's Association), SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) and serves on the SHRM HR Director Forum in New York. When she takes off her HR cape, Melanese is a former event planner, avid traveler and foodie, which afforded her the opportunity to meet many great chefs, including Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, Thomas Keller and others.