Women to Watch 2021: Lizzie Strobel, Digitas ANZ

Lizzie Strobel

Head of production
Digitas ANZ
Australia

Lizzie Strobel is a proud Digitas-lifer, having spent her entire career working for the company. Starting in New York as a financial analyst for LBi (later to become Digitas), her rapid ascension has seen her promoted five times in 11 years, excelling in a variety of project management roles in New York before transferring to Sydney where today she is responsible for all delivery, capacity planning, forecasting and reconciliations.

Nicknamed ‘Queen’s Gambit’, Strobel is famed for her unique ability to move the chess pieces to fulfil the most puzzling of resourcing challenges and create space for staff to excel.

This skill was tested to its limits in 2020 through the extreme challenges that the pandemic placed on the agency. During this time, Strobel helped Digitas deliver a 47% increase in headcount with zero redundancies and organic revenue growth of 104% for its top 10 clients.

Her crowning achievement through this period was to onboard all of the CRM operations for McDonald’s. Strobel established a blended delivery team across Digitas’ Australia and New Zealand offices, setting the foundations, ways of working and governance structures for ongoing delivery ensuring zero downtime for all BAU operations—which was all done completely remotely. The account is projected to realise 30% revenue growth YOY (2020-2021), which is testament to Strobel’s efforts in setting core delivery foundations in a challenging remote working scenario.

But beyond driving revenue growth, Strobel has a passion for bringing about positive change in the industry, particularly for driving equality and change for women in the industry. This was recognised in 2020 when she was appointed as chair of Publicis Groupe’s Viva Women committee, dedicated to supporting and elevating women staff across all Publicis agencies in Australia through leadership training, workshops and projects to expand their knowledge base.