Leslie Diard

While one supposes it’s important to tell you that Leslie Diard is our deeply experienced communications planning director, one can barely wait to say that she started her professional life as a purchasing agent for Shell Oil in Houston, wore a hard hat to work and frequently visited offshore drilling platforms. Since then, Leslie has veered sharply toward the marketing mainstream, serving as a media supervisor at Foote, Cone & Belding/San Francisco, as a VP, group account director, at Hawk Media and as media director at Swirl. Her pre-DC client experience includes Taco Bell, Dreyer’s Ice Cream, MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, Pearle Vision and The Wine Group. And at DC, she oversees a communications planning department that has over the years been responsible for the planning and purchasing of media for, among others, StubHub, John Muir Health, Tishman Speyer, Clos du Bois, the Palms and Hard Rock. Leslie has an MBA from the renowned Thunderbird School of Global Management. She is also a former professor at the Art Institute of California, and, in recent years, was elected president of the American Marketing Association, San Francisco chapter.