Michele is a passionate and thoughtful leader who inspires excellence and effectiveness across every facet of the Makerhouse business. Her experience and expertise make her a trusted creative business partner and client advisor.
Her perspective on our increasingly experiential and visually driven world is that effective design and content solutions at scale have a powerful role to play as a brand delivery mechanism. Crafting differentiated brand experiences and delivering them through smart production solutions that drive excellence and effectiveness, along with savings and efficiency, is simply good business.
Through her career Michele has had the pleasure of working on a variety of brands and has been recognized by the EFFIEs, CA, AIGA, GDUSA, TDC, DDF, The D Show and the Urban Green Council. She was named one of Graphic Design USA’s “People to Watch” in 2013 and is a frequent speaker and panelist. Most recently, she was a Design juror for the 60th Annual CLIO Awards and for the IADAS 24th Annual Webby Awards.
Michele’s passion for design and production is evident and only overshadowed by her passion to live life to its fullest. And being a mom to the greatest son on the planet.
Ant is an operations expert with a savant-like ability to redesign fragmented operations or build new ones from the ground up to deliver efficiency and effectiveness.
His inclusive and supportive nature builds teams that strive to deliver work everyone can be proud of. With decades of experience in WPP and beyond, across retail, education and automotive sectors, he brings both institutional knowledge and a fresh perspective to deliver effective solutions for our clients.
Outside of work, Ant's three wonderful kids are his life. He has remained a lifelong Nintendo fanboy, who will occasionally escape onto the plains of Hyrule or hit the track in his spare time.
Carley is our nexus, bringing everything together so the magic can happen. Resourcing, operations, financial and asset management — you name it, Carley organizes it.
Her background as an art director helps her see agency process from all sides and solve problems creatively. In fact, it was while working as a creative that she fell for the business. Not many can make the switch, but Carley could, and are we glad she did. After working on FMCG brands, she turned to operations here at Makerhouse.
When she’s not wading through process workflows and investigating new agency tools, you’ll find her happily wading through a muddy farm with her two girls or at home batch cooking in the kitchen.
A creative mind with a strategic edge, Christine is a design guru with more than 20 years’ experience in design and advertising.
Her empathetic leadership style and expertise in brand design, development and operationalization have made a significant positive impact on our clients’ business. Her specialty lies in balancing the art and science of brand design to shape identities that resonate with audiences across regions and channels.
In recent years Christine has spoken about design at SXSW, taken part in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony and passed a kidney stone. Personal achievements aside, she’s happiest with her husband and two daughters in her favorite place on earth, “Up North” Michigan.
Cliff is a production polymath who thrives on complexity. He’s lived and worked around the world, has roots in journalism and motorsport PR, and was forging a career in content before content was even a thing.
An agency veteran, Cliff has experience leading the creation of in-house production teams around the world for blue-chip clients, including Ford.
Twenty-five years ago, Cliff landed in London for a role in Ford’s Formula One program. He went on to live in Germany and Thailand on the way to becoming worldwide managing partner for WPP’s Prism Sport + Entertainment.
Today, Cliff fosters production solutions across WPP and Makerhouse, driving integrated efficiency for clients in an ever-evolving media landscape.
When he’s not working, Cliff can be found in an old British sports car that likes occasionally stopping at pubs.
Diana is part orchestra conductor, part air traffic controller, expertly keeping everything in motion to produce exquisite, groundbreaking work.
As director of one of our most complex business units, she leads a loyal team that manages fast-paced multimedia production. She knows her clients inside out and possesses encyclopedic knowledge and mastery of production management and compliance. Add to that a no-nonsense approach and an abundance of empathy, and you have the perfect recipe for getting things done well.
Hailing from J. Walter Thompson, Diana built her career supporting creative production and delivery. With several leadership roles under her belt, she was finally tempted back to Detroit from her previous position in Antwerp, Belgium.
Diana is a graduate of the University of Detroit. She is married to an Italian chef and has three daughters — another perfect recipe.
Like the curator of the Louvre, the Met and the British Museum rolled into one, Jennifer is responsible for the curation, storage and retrieval of our entire global content output. For any client, successful Digital Asset Management (DAM) is critical to business success. And Jennifer rules DAM.
Experienced, passionate and respected, she’s been setting up and managing DAM systems for more than 15 years, winning the trust of diverse clients including Ford, Chevrolet, the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Navy. It’s no surprise she’s a leader in the DAM field and regularly speaks at industry events and webinars.
Jennifer likes to spend her free time outside with her two amazing daughters, and on the weekends can be found on the water, on a trail, or out in the snow — depending on the season of course.
At heart JJ is a brand storyteller, as well as a brand curator, translator and amplifier — talents he applies to enabling brand storytelling across complex markets in Asia and beyond.
Integrated, connected and international, JJ has built a unique hybrid skillset. On his journey, he’s worked in client services and media planning in the U.S. and Asia, and produced content from the Australian outback to the jungles of Thailand.
Today, JJ successfully manages the complex business of producing effective content at scale across our diverse international markets.
JJ has spent much of his life in Asia. He first moved to the region as a nine-year-old military brat. Since then, he’s lived, studied and worked in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Thailand. His favorite things are reading the New Yorker, spending time with his girlfriend and exploring the possibilities of virtual reality.
When you need someone who understands business, technology and people, and can get the best from them all, call Kathy.
Like an experienced diplomat, she combines a light touch with deep knowledge, and always keeps her eye on the prize. Specializing in automotive, she’s worked in a global capacity across various areas from brand to web, CRM to events, as well as sponsorships and promotions. She has experience in TV, digital and print, and an understanding of complex dealer and retail networks.
It’s this breadth of experience, and an ever-optimistic spirit, that helps Kathy build relationships and solutions so effectively across regions and markets.
Kathy is married to an artist, David, and has two kids, Emma and Evan. She hopes to one day cage dive with great white sharks off the coast of Africa.
A big hitter? A safe pair of hands? Metaphors don’t do justice to Kurt’s heavyweight reputation as one of the industry's most accomplished production executives.
With decades of experience studio side, agency side, in post and consulting, Kurt has a rare grasp of the complexities that exist in production today. He strides across capabilities, from masterminding mega shoots and offshoring for efficiency to producing dynamic content for OLA.
He’s worked for clients including British Petroleum, Mazda, 7-Eleven, Chrysler, Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Navy. Now, as our head of production in North America, Kurt is helping to deliver slam-dunk strategies for Ford and other clients.
As a lover of travel and an avid boater, Kurt spends his spare time enjoying these activities with family and friends. On the boat he lives by one rule, and one rule only-“When on the lake, time is meaningless, so don’t bother asking when we’re returning to the dock!”
Like a global business collaborator, Lisa connects business needs with agency talent to make amazing productive unions.
Lisa’s background is diverse but focused, always matching creativity with opportunity. She’s worked across studio production, creative services and experiential partnerships, in creative industries from fashion and art to advertising.
With her experience and talent Lisa sees the bigger picture, combining passion, imagination, and enthusiasm to create the perfect masterpiece.
Lisa will stop and talk to every dog she sees. She likes to make things — knit, paint portraits (of dogs, of course) and bake. Although she’s happiest on the sand listening to the waves, you’ll most likely find her on the tennis court, where the back of her shirt says “serve.” You figure it out.
The question: How do we consistently ensure we have the right people, platforms and processes to deliver creative excellence? The answer: Mike Treppa.
Right-brain creative, left-brain practical, Mike is truly mentally ambidextrous. A designer by trade, with more than 30 years’ experience in advertising, he has a deep understanding of production and design from both the creative and practical sides of the business. Knowledge he deftly applies to running our multidisciplinary production studios.
In recognition of his significant contribution to the design community, Mike was made an AIGA Fellow in 2013.
Mike loves adventuring with his adult “kids” and staying active by playing hockey, paddleboarding, hiking and cross-country skiing. He also has a passion for music, cooking and foraging for the elusive morel mushroom.
A strategic supernova, Nicole radiates energy, empathy and experience. With her leadership, production at Makerhouse takes its rightful place alongside business, creative and content strategy, at the start of the process, informing what we make and how me make it.
With more than 20 years’ experience at all levels of digital production, Nicole has delivered results-driven campaigns for clients including Cadillac, Audi, Ford, Virgin Mobile, NASDAQ and Travelocity.
Her passion for the creative process and honest communication style are a winning combination. But always, empathy is the heart of her work — empathy for her clients, teammates and, above all, her audience.
When not at her laptop, Nicole is doing her part to keep her hometown vibrant by farming and volunteering at Detroit Abloom, a local community garden.
Designer, animator, programmer, filmmaker, illustrator — Rich is a creative hybrid who brings a legion of skills to the production studio. He likes to roll up his sleeves and get stuck in crafting work, offering an opinion and creating content that packs an aesthetic and strategic punch.
He has a photographic memory, a telephoto eye for detail and a wide-angle lens for seeing the bigger picture, which means no detail escapes him. A true “end-to-end” creative, Rich recognizes the critical roles played by all aspects of a brand’s communications.
Known for his resourcefulness and ingenuity, Rich is smart with production budgets, often delivering way beyond our clients’ expectations.
Rich is married with six kids, and his photographic memory makes him rather good at playing spot the difference — although he’s terrible at playing cards.
In a fast-moving digital landscape, having the right production technology and infrastructure is crucial for our business.
Fortunately for us, and our clients, we have Steve. An expert in production solutions and technology, Steve leads a team focusing on workflow optimization, asset management systems and global production technology platforms and toolsets.
An experienced technologist, Steve has worked for leading agencies and blue-chip brands. He’s built award-winning digital solutions and worked closely with clients to pioneer new marketing technologies and performance-driven solutions.
Married for 20 years and the father of three boys, Steve enjoys music, the outdoors and good BBQ.
