The Gate Appoints Forsman & Bodenfors CEO Helen James

​The Gate London has appointed Forsman & Bodenfors’ Helen Jamesas its new chief executive officer, to build on the agency’s recent record of winning new business, growing its clients, refining its creative output and collecting awards.

Helen takes up the role on September 15th, and brings significant agency management experience, having led Forsman & Bodenfors London, Crispin Porter Bogusky and BBH over her 20-year career.

At The Gate, Helen will work closely with its management team including chairman Stephen Maher, chief strategy officer Kit Altin, chief creative officer Lucas Peon and joint managing directors Charlotte Wolfenden and James Middlehurst, to drive forward the agency’s proposition of blending creativity, data and technology to help brands ‘walk through walls’. This approach has delivered results for clients such as The AA, The Very Group and Smarty, with work picking up Golds at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Effies, APG and the Marketing Society Awards.

Helen’s focus at The Gate will be collaborating with the team on delivering creative excellence, commercialising it and structuring it into a compelling and motivating proposition for clients, prospective clients and the ‘Gaters’. She replaces Jamie Elliott, who is stepping down from The Gate after eight years as CEO next January to ensure a smooth transition for clients.

“I'm joining a brilliant, established, solid team who are doing some great work with brilliant clients, focused on the UK,” Helen told LBB, speaking about what attracted her to The Gate. “There's so much creative opportunity already being realised, and so much more that Lucas and Kit want to develop and push forward in the next phase of The Gate.

“It's all about the people when you do what we do,” she added. “So much of our time is spent in the office, working with clients, working with a team. If you don't work with a group of like-minded people who you trust, that you believe you can stand next to in a pitch or sell a big piece of work with, then we might as well go home. Everyone I've met, from Lucas and Kit, to the team, to the folks at MSQ, have all had a shared ambition, have all been really excited about the future, and are people I’d want to have a beer with – which is important. So much of our time is spent at work with these people that I want it to be rewarding personally as well as professionally.”

Helen noted that the “opportunity to win” was also a draw for her. “Our industry is going through so much change at the moment, and I think The Gate and MSQ are really primed to win in this market. It feels like an independent – from the conversations I’ve had, the work that’s being done, the relationships with clients – but because of MSQ you’ve got the opportunity with different capabilities and skills to plug in what clients need.”

The new CEO expanded on how that can help in a new business context. “You can go out and lead from a Gate perspective but then also say, ‘if you need help in these areas, we can plug it in seamlessly.’ It also means with existing clients, we can give them much more of what they need in what has become a really fragmented media landscape for marketers. So I’m really excited about that opportunity: feeling like an independent but being able to scale and show up differently for clients, both with new business and existing ones.”

Stephen Maher, chair of The Gate commented: “We are hugely excited to attract someone of Helen’s calibre to The Gate. She brings leadership, creativity and purpose to the role, a huge passion for our industry and a real drive to move things forward. I want to thank Jamie for all that he has done at The Gate and wish him all the best in the future. He leaves the agency in strong shape which will allow Helen to truly thrive at the helm.”

A passionate advocate for women in the creative industry, Helen led the successful merger of Crispin Porter Bogusky with Forsman & Bodenfors – one of the world’s most creatively awarded collectives – taking charge of its London operations as CEO and playing a key role in the broader Stagwell network. In 2018 she co-founded Creative Equals Business, a programme supporting women in marketing and leadership roles, and in 2023 founded WMN, a female-forward studio within Crispin Porter Bogusky delivering award-winning campaigns like ‘Mother’s Day Cards from Misogynists’ (with online card marketplace, thortful).

In the last five years Helen and the Forsman & Bodenfors team worked with Pernod Ricard across five of its brands, created a global womenswear campaign for ASICS, repositioned Tinder for gen-z women through their new safety features and helped Hotels.com become the eighth most recognised advertiser in the UK.

Her global campaigns, including the viral ‘Imagine’ campaign for International Women’s Day which won Gold at the Creative Circle Awards and was Highly Commended at the Burberry British Diversity Awards, has earned recognition from NATO and UN Women, with Helen invited to speak on branding and communication.

Under Helen’s leadership, Forsman & Bodenfors was named Unstereotype Alliance’s UK Agency of the Year in 2024 for its work in breaking stereotypes in advertising and earlier this year she was presented with the Suki Thompson Award for Championing Change, recognising her leadership in driving positive industry initiatives.

Prior to Forsman & Bodenfors, Helen spent a decade at BBH, latterly as managing partner, where she was instrumental in landing and leading the Virgin Media and Tesco accounts. She drove the transition and transformation of Tesco through a sizeable multi-disciplinary team across brand, digital and social, shopper and direct – reimagining the meaning of ‘Every Little Helps’.

Both CCO Lucas and CSO Kit emphasised the alignment of values they’ve already felt bringing Helen into The Gate. “When we first met Helen, it felt very natural,” said Lucas. “She had the same interests as we have – building great teams to create great work. That’s the simplicity of what we do – we go to work every day to build and elevate our teams to create the best work we can so our clients benefit.”

“We love that Helen, like us, has been dedicated to creativity from day one,” he added. “She’s built teams in three different places, which suggests to us that we want to be the next place she helps elevate. That’s what we want.”

As CSO, Kit admires Helen’s track record. “Lucas and I have the same priority, which is that creativity is everything. All of the strategy is only in service of the creativity. We’re 100% aligned on that. Helen has led incredibly creative companies, brands and departments – that was really important to us. She’s the right person because of her commitment to exceptional creativity. We’re already into this new era of AI and the phenomenal changes it’s bringing, and we’re all agreed the only thing that really matters in this new world is absolutely exceptional creativity. That’s what humans are going to bring. We wanted a new partner who was 100% in on that, who’s only interested in doing iconic creativity. We found that in Helen.”

Kit also highlighted Helen’s work beyond purely commercial goals. “She doesn’t just do a brilliant job leading companies, but also tries to make the industry better – she’s done amazing things with Creative Equals and won awards for making change. That meant a lot to us as well: she’s a force not just for the agency, but for the industry and the world more broadly.”

During his tenure, Jamie helped lead the reinvention of The Gate in 2017, steering the agency through covid-19 and overseeing a complete transformation that left the business unrecognisable compared to when he took over. He is credited with building the client partnerships and agency culture that Helen inherits today.

“You cannot overstate the transformation the agency has gone through. It has been an absolute turnaround, a complete transformation,” said Kit, who joined just months after Jamie. “It’s unrecognisable today from the agency we took over in 2017. Jamie is handing something over to Helen that’s really precious and special and that we’re incredibly proud of.

“Yes, it’s about the work, and incredibly strong client partnerships, but also the agency culture, which we’re proud of because that’s really hard to do well. Agency life is always very dynamic. Steering an agency through a massive turnaround and through covid-19 and everything else in recent years is no small feat.

“Jamie has been a fantastic partner in that. He’s helped steer the ship through some pretty severe storms, and we’ve come out stronger. His contribution has been phenomenal. We’re sad to see him go, but excited about the new chapter,” she concluded.

Recognising that the agency is in “a really good place,” Helen emphasised that she won’t be shaking things up too much. “None of us are saying it needs to be wholly different. It’s more about building on the brilliant foundations,” she said. “We’ve talked a lot about creativity – how do we invest more in it? As Kit said, the industry is changing, AI is coming in, and we’re all trying to understand how we work differently. We want to embrace those different ways of working, while also doubling down on creativity and delivering for our clients. It’s about moving to the next level in how we deliver for clients, and giving more of our people more opportunity to make brilliant creative work. That’s the lifeblood of our industry, and we believe it should continue to be as we move forward.”

Kit sees her time at The Gate in two chapters so far: “This feels like the third chapter in the story. The first was when we took it over in 2017. The second was when we got Lucas – a huge step up. And now this is going to be another big step up. It feels like the car is shifting into a higher gear.”

As CCO, Lucas is looking forward to that next chapter. “As good as we are, we always feel we can be better tomorrow. That’s what drives us – the belief there’s a better idea, a better campaign, a better step to take as an agency,” he said. “Every time someone great joins, like Helen, it’s the excitement of seeing that can make us better.”

This article first appeared on Little Black Book here.