Image of Karen Ellis
Jury

Karen Ellis
Executive Creative Director
Leo Burnett Singapore

SINGAPORE // A true artist at heart with expertise in prestige beauty, Karen is an award-winning creative director with a penchant for superb design and craft.

Karen started her creative journey in NYC at Estée Lauder, and then flipped to the agency side as group creative director on L’Oreal and Revlon with McCann-Erickson and Deutsch. Her personal projects included book design for Ruven Afanador’s Torero, a TIME magazine cover featuring her trompe l’oeil painting of Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo, and exhibition catalogue design for artists Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg.

In 2004, she joined Grey London as Global Creative Director for Hugo Boss Fragrances, and 2011 as Global Creative Director for SelectNY Europe.

Whilst in London, Karen judged the BTAA British Arrows Craft Awards numerous times and won a Gold Effie for her work on BOSS. She also launched her yogic inspired lifestyle line Chakra® and partnered with African inspired social mission brand Aduna®.

In 2013, Karen ventured to Singapore, first for Ogilvy before joining Leo Burnett as Executive Creative Director.

Since 2015, Karen has driven the iterative development of SK-II’s “Change Destiny” into a total brand philosophy influencing every communication created by all of SK-II’s partner agencies. She kick-started the digital revolution with the “Change Destiny” manifesto films, and led the “Dream Again. Change Destiny.” campaign, which outperformed any initiative to date, including a recent YouTube Best of 2016 Ads Leaderboard Award.

Karen recently served on the Film, Print, Print & Outdoor Craft for Dubai Lynx 2017 Festival. She is also on the Design Jury for Cannes Lions this June and the Digital Jury for the Lisbon Advertising Festival in September.

An avid traveller, yogini and curiosity seeker, Karen doesn’t own a TV and consumes everything online. Except dinner, which she loves to cook.