President
DDB Group Shanghai
From an art director to a dot.com entrepreneur, and then to a business manager, Jesse has played many roles over the last 15 years. Jesse started his career as a design assistant at a small graphic design house in Redmond, Washington. He then moved to Taiwan to work for Leo Burnett as a designer, working on Hennessy, Phillip Morris, and Reebok. He was lured by his former creative director to join JWT as an art director working on Ford. His hardworking attitude and proactive creative solutions earned clients' trust and respect.
At the start of the new millennium, Jesse took a detour to pursue a dot.com dream. But the NASDAQ dot.com crash put a damper on plans. However, an opportunity with Leo Burnett to set up an interactive department got Jesse back into the ad world. Within 2 years, Jesse grew the department from 0 to 14 clients and became the most profitable department at Leo Burnett, serving clients like Heineken, Johnnie Walker, Konica, McDonald's, P&G, and Yahoo.
He was transferred to Leo Burnett Hong Kong as Group Brand Director, handling the McDonald's China account. For his capability and entrepreneurial spirit, Jesse was hired by Wieden + Kennedy as their first managing director in China. He started the operation with 6 people and no clients. Through pitches against established networks, Jesse led the team to win international clients like Nike, Starbucks and Electronic Arts. He grew the agency to 25 people with an annual revenue of RMB 27 million in 18 months.
Jesse has been Managing Director of DDB China since 2007. In early 2010 he was promoted to Vice President, and is also part of the China Executive Committee. He focuses on new business development and providing integrated communication solutions for international clients like Pepsi, Lipton and McDonald's. In 2010, his leadership helped guide DDB China to win Greater China Creative Agency of the Year at the 2010 Campaign Agency of the Year Awards and Ad Age China's Agency of the Year. Jesse is also a rookie dad, a video game hobbyist and a graduate of the EMBA program at Beijing University.