Sarah Golding, global partner and former London CEO at WPP’s T&Pm is leaving the agency after 23 years. T&Pm, in which Golding was shareholder, sold the remaining outstanding stake to WPP at the end of last year. Golding, a former IPA president, was succeeded as London CEO by Victoria Appleby from Channel 4. Golding is married to adam&eve and New Commercial Arts founder David Golding.
Golding says: “This has really been an incredibly difficult decision to make. Anyone who knows me will know how much I love this agency and what a huge part of my life it has been, working with a team of brilliant people to grow the business from only a 10-person independent creative agency to a fully integrated 2000-person global creative and media business with AI at its heart (she says loyally, AI is the agency’s latest mantra.)
“I’m incredibly proud to have been part of such an amazing agency evolution. But after 23 years, it’s time for new challenges, and I really want to test myself again.”
T&Pm began life as Clemmow Hornby Inge in 2002 with Cambridge graduate Golding, hired from Lowe, as its first new business director. She was rightly famed at T&Pm (in all its various guises) as a hard-driving CEO laced with oodles of charm.
Founder Johnny Hornby (who’s still there alongside other business interests including Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone beer business) says: “I am incredibly proud of everything we have done together over the last 23 years. Hardly anyone stays at one agency for that long, and it just shows what a special agency this is and what a special person Sarah is. We all wish her nothing but success and happiness for all that she does next.”
