Frieda Ulsamer de Waard joins DartDesign as Managing Director

Frieda is a seasoned agency leader who knows both the creative and the commercial side of the profession from the inside. She previously worked for international agencies including Doom & Dickson and Kokoro, and most recently led 2Basics/The Invaders as managing director, where she was responsible for the agency's development and growth. She joins a management team expanded in June with Aidan Zanelis as Client Services Director, who arrives from Design Bridge & Partners in London to build out DartDesign's Corporate Reporting team.

DartDesign combines strategy, creativity and entrepreneurship, and those three come together naturally - you see it in the work," says Frieda Ulsamer de Waard. "I look forward to building the future of the agency together with Sebastiaan and the team, and to supporting our clients in that.

The division of roles is deliberate. Frieda takes day-to-day leadership, with a first priority of making the organisation scalable. Sebastiaan shifts his focus outward, to new business, strategic partnerships and key accounts. In a market where demand for strategic communication is rising faster than agencies can absorb it, separating the running of the business from the building of it is what makes the next growth phase executable.