Wavemaker MY promotes Sheley Lim to GM, Michael Tan moves on

Wavemaker Malaysia has witnessed a leadership shuffle, promoting its head of digital Sheley Lim (pictured right) to GM reporting to GroupM Malaysia CEO Chanchal Chakrabarty. Meanwhile, MD Michael Tan (pictured left) is stepping down in mid-May after joining in 2019 from Shopper360 where he was CEO. A search for his replacement is actively ongoing and Lim will oversee the agency in the interim.

Chakrabarty told A+M that over the years, he has seen Lim develop from a planner to head of digital, and now GM of the agency. "Lim is a highly regarded media veteran with 18 years of experience, of which 14 years were spent with GroupM. She will be working closely with me and the Wavemaker leadership team to ensure a seamless transition in business operations and client servicing," he added.

She has been with Wavemaker for two years and since the launch of GroupM’s end-to-end eCommerce services, Lim championed total eCommerce solutions for Wavemaker Malaysia and successfully acquired the first eCommerce exclusive beverage brand. The agency also won a few digital performance-led accounts which were all spearheaded by Lim.

At the same time, Wavemaker told A+M that Lim participated actively in the Wavemaker APAC Audience Planning workstream; part of Wavemaker’s Provocative Planning agenda. The team was formed to look at current challenges and efforts required to build a proper audience planning journey on digital. Lim also created a digital community of 20 members in Wavemaker Malaysia to strengthen digital planning skills and to drive consistencies across all business teams in the agency. Passionate about D&I, Lim volunteered as the D&I Champion for Malaysia and now Walk The Talk Champion for APAC, running women empowerment leadership training programmes for the region

Before Wavemaker, Lim was with oRo Digital Asia as GM. She joined the company in 2017 as head of brand strategy. Lim has a wealth of experience on the agency side, having worked at People 'n Rich and MEC as business director and Mindshare as manager. She was also with Citi Malaysia as VP, digital sales.

Meanwhile, Chakrabarty said the team extends its appreciation to Tan, who has decided to explore opportunities outside of the network. "The search for his replacement is actively ongoing. We have a strong pipeline of talents within the network as well as a roster of external candidates that are being considered for this leadership appointment, and we will announce the successor in due course," he added.

Separately, Wavemaker's sister agency named Phaik Cheng head of m/SIX after former MD Farrah Harith-Mcpherson joined Naga DDB Tribal in the newly created role of chief growth officer reporting to CEO Kristian Lee. More recently, GroupM merged its agencies Essence and MediaCom to form EssenceMediacom, a new agency offering fusing the digital and data-driven DNA of Essence with MediaCom’s scaled multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise.

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