{"id":12299,"date":"2019-04-01T12:21:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T08:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/?p=12299"},"modified":"2019-04-01T12:21:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T08:21:22","slug":"mastercards-raja-rajamannar-named-wfa-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/mastercards-raja-rajamannar-named-wfa-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Mastercard&#8217;s Raja Rajamannar Named WFA President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WFA has announced a new leadership team and elected Mastercard\u2019s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Raja Rajamannar, as its new President. He will serve a two-year term as WFA President, with the option to extend for a further two years.<\/p>\n<p>Rajamannar has worked for Mastercard since 2013, and in particular has led the company\u2019s marketing transformation, including the integration of the Marketing and Communication functions, evolution of its Priceless experiential platform, and creation of cutting edge marketing-led business models into the core of the company. Recently Raja pioneered Mastercard\u2019s move to become a symbol brand and the launch of its breakthrough sonic brand platform. He also serves as President of Mastercard\u2019s Healthcare Division in addition to his role as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer.<\/p>\n<p>With more than 30 years of experience as a global executive across multiple industries, previous roles include Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, WellPoint (now Anthem, Inc.); Chief Executive, International and Chief Innovation &amp; Marketing Officer, Humana; Global Chief Marketing Officer, Cards and Payments, Citigroup; and CEO of Diners Club North America. Raja started his career with Asian Paints in India. He was also the winner of the 2018 WFA Global Marketer of the Year award.<\/p>\n<p>He replaces David Wheldon, CMO at RBS, who has been president since 2015. Wheldon will continue to serve on WFA\u2019s Executive Committee as Regional Vice-President for Western Europe.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe opportunity in front of marketers today to make a difference for their brand, their business and even the world is tremendous. I am honoured to pick up and carry the torch as President of WFA, an organization committed to elevating and advancing the activities of our profession, and a role I am convinced will become even more important in the years to come,\u201d said Rajamannar. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to be working with Raja as our new President. He\u2019s one of the very best in the business and his work at Mastercard demonstrates how marketers can deliver unrivalled business and social impact when they\u2019re at the top of their game,\u201d <\/em>said <strong>Stephan Loerke, CEO of WFA<\/strong>. <em>\u201cI\u2019d also like to thank David for his invaluable service as President. He is nothing short of a giant in the global marketing industry and he has helped lift the organisation to another level in terms of its relevance to CMOs, its strategic focus and its global expansion. We\u2019re delighted he\u2019s agreed to stay on our Executive Committee and help steer the organisation through future challenges.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Deputy President role has been attributed to Philip Myers, Senior Vice-President, Global Policy and Government Affairs at PepsiCo, who takes over from Matthias Berninger, former Vice-President, Public Affairs at Mars.<\/p>\n<p>Philip leads PepsiCo\u2019s government and stakeholder relations. Previously, he oversaw public policy and communications across the company\u2019s Europe Sub-Saharan Africa business and before that led the European Retail Round Table, which brought together Europe\u2019s leading retailers on public policy issues. His appointment reflects the dual nature of WFA\u2019s mission working with both marketers to ensure marketing effectiveness and policy professionals to protect brands\u2019 license to operate.<\/p>\n<p>The new President, Deputy President and Regional Vice-President roles are part of a wider change in WFA\u2019s leadership team which also includes a number of new executive committee members:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jean-Luc Ch\u00e9trit<\/strong>, CEO, French Advertisers Association (UDA) &amp; WFA Treasurer<\/li>\n<li><strong>Edward Bell<\/strong>, General Manager Brand, Insight and Marketing Communications, Cathay Pacific Airways<\/li>\n<li><strong>Adam Mohamed Wee Abdullah<\/strong>, Group Chief Marketing Officer, CIMB<\/li>\n<li><strong>Val\u00e9rie Hernando-Presse<\/strong>, Chief Marketing Officer, Danone<\/li>\n<li><strong>Gerhard Louw<\/strong>, Head of International Media Management, Deutsche Telekom<\/li>\n<li><strong>Allyson Park<\/strong>, Global Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Mars<\/li>\n<li><strong>Francesco Tramontin<\/strong>, Director, Global Public Affairs, Mondelez<\/li>\n<li><strong>Lynette Pang<\/strong>, Assistant Chief Executive, Marketing Group, Singapore Tourism Board<\/li>\n<li><strong>Atul Agrawal<\/strong>, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Brand and Marketing, Tata<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jan Morten Drange<\/strong>, CEO, Association of Norwegian Advertisers (ANFO)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>\u201cIt\u2019s always gratifying that so many senior marketers are willing to serve on WFA\u2019s committees and forums. We couldn\u2019t do half the work we do without these vital contributions and the wisdom of so many senior marketers and policy professionals is critical in identifying upcoming issues and potential solutions to the many challenges faced by brands today,\u201d <\/em>said <strong>Stephan Loerke<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The full list of the WFA\u2019s executive committee members can be seen at www.wfanet.org\/executive.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/H.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"77\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WFA has announced a new leadership team and elected Mastercard\u2019s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Raja Rajamannar, as its new President. He will serve a two-year term as WFA President, with the option to extend for a further two years. Rajamannar has worked for Mastercard since 2013, and in particular has led the company\u2019s marketing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12301,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12299\/revisions\/12301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleeastevents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}