In a slew of announcements, Klick named Lori Grant as Klick Health CEO, launched two new practice areas and added two more business units.
Grant was already president of the pharma and healthcare agency; her promotion to CEO was announced at a Klick internal town hall in December. Klick planned to announce her official appointment in May at its Klick Ideas Exchange that would have featured President Barack Obama. But the COVID-19 pandemic intervened, forcing the event's cancellation.
“In the last nine months since that internal announcement at Klick, the world has changed fairly significantly,” Grant said, adding that Klick has adapted well and is in fact, “treating the year of 2020 as a year of possibility, not of pause.”
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Leerom Segal, co-founder of Klick Health, stepped back from the CEO role to hand the reins to Grant, but remains co-founder and chairman of Klick Health, and chairman and CEO of Klick Group. He said Grant has grown organically into the Health group’s CEO role over her tenure as president
Along with Grant’s appointment, Klick Group announced two new business units, Klick Consulting and Klick Ventures. Both initiatives have been building out capabilities, adding employees and running pilots with clients in the lead up to the formal announcement, Segal said.
Klick also reported two key staff hires and new practice areas. Amy Gomez joined as senior VP of diversity strategy, while David Bowen joined as senior VP heading up policy and advocacy.
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Gomez came to Klick before the pandemic to help launch its cross-cultural marketing practice, joining from WPP Group’s dedicated Johnson & Johnson unit called The Neighborhood.
Bowen joined Klick around the same time to help formally launch its policy and advocacy practice. He came from Hill+Knowlton, where he headed health and wellness and served as chief policy officer for the WPP Health & Wellness network. He is a former policy director on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, where he helped write health laws including the Affordable Care Act.