Di Wilkins

Di Wilkins recently assumed the Chair role at Omnicom’s leading digital marketing and design agency Critical Mass, after 15 years as Chief Executive Officer. In her 23 years with Critical Mass, Di has held multiple key roles—Managing Director, coach, entrepreneur and leader for teams and clients. During her tenure, Critical Mass and its affiliate organizations grew from 25 people in Canada to 1000 employees working in numerous locations around the globe. Her leadership vision and values have propelled Critical Mass to its widely recognized breadth and depth of services, its vibrant agency culture, its purpose-driven mindset, and its unwavering commitment to client service.

Di began her Critical Mass career in Stockholm, leading the Saab account on a global basis. After two years, she relocated to Calgary and was promoted to CEO in January 2006. Prior to that, she received an MBA while pursuing a career as a golf pro. Her passion for the game is one of the things that attracted her to Critical Mass in its early days, a time when the agency designed instructional CD-ROM’s for golf but had ambitions to do much more. Di immediately recognized the potential of both the fledgling agency and digital and never looked back. While her golf handicap suffered, the Critical Mass team and their clients benefited for over two decades from her strong leadership and strategic vision.

Under Di’s leadership Critical Mass has been recognized across its industry as an A-List Agency, Best Engagement Agency, Top UX Design Agency, Best Agency to Work For, Best Place to Work, Employer of the Year and Agency of the Year. Di herself was recently included among Campaign’s 40 Over 40 list and named Top Boss in the Digiday Worklife Awards and Agency Leader of the Year by Campaign. Industry comments and POVs from Di have been published in The New York Times, Forbes, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, and Campaign, and she's been interviewed on a number of podcasts, including Real Famous, A Call to Action, and Fearless Creative Leaders. Di is also a founding member of Omniwomen, an organization inside Omnicom (Critical Mass’s parent company) designed to facilitate getting more women in senior leadership roles across Omnicom.

Di is also currently Chair of the Board at Fast & Female, a charity whose mission is to empower girls through sport. She is also a past board member at the House of Anansi Press and currently works with a number of startups as both a strategic advisor and angel investor. Di is a Selection Committee Member and Advisor for Axis Connect, and the Calgary Influential Women in Business Awards. In addition, Di is the co-founder and Managing Partner of a private activist investor fund that has set out to prove that public companies with a female CEO are inherently more diverse and resultingly achieve stronger financial performance.

Prior to beginning her career with Critical Mass, Di was an avid competitive golfer. Following a successful junior golf career, Di attended the University of South Alabama on a golf scholarship. She was a 3-time Team Captain, 3-time Academic All-American, and ranked as high as 75th in the NCAA Division 1 rankings. Di was also tapped by the Mortar Board Honors Society, and went on to complete her MBA on an academic scholarship. Following University, Di was also a CPGA Golf Professional and college instructor in Canada.