Weber Shandwick names new SG VP and senior VP

Communications and public relations agency Weber Shandwick has promoted Zakiah Zakariah (pictured left) to the role of vice president for its operations in Singapore. In tandem, it has also promoted previous vice president Arif Rajab (pictured right) to the role of senior vice president.

As the corporate lead in the Singapore office, Zakariah will work on building its brand reputation, crisis preparedness, and integrated communications capabilities, according to her LinkedIn page.

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Zakariah brings with her over eight years of experience in corporate communications and media relations at Weber Shandwick. She joined the company in 2015 as an associate trainee and quickly climbed the ranks, helping roles such as associate, consultant and senior associate of client experience.

She was also a senior manager at the company from 2021 to 2023 and a client experience manager from 2019 to 2021. She was made account director in 2022, a role she held for just over a year. In this role, she focused on corporate, public, and crisis communications, as well as media relations, content strategy, and public relations before being made vice president. 

With Zakariah's promotion, Weber Shandwick's previous vice president, Rajab, will be ascending the ranks as senior vice president, according to his LinkedIn. Having been in the company for just under eight years, Rajab leads the company's integrated media strategy team and drives the agency's capability building programmes to develop integrated PR competencies. He also focuses on social media marketing, influencer marketing, digital advertising, and brand activations, according to his LinkedIn page. 

Weber Shandwick's parent company, Interpublic Group (IPG), has also seen recent movements in its media holding company, IPG Mediabrands. In September 2023, it launched KINESSO, a tech-driven performance unit aiming to deliver intelligence that moves brands forward. 

The new entity was created through the integration of three existing brands in the agency's portfolio - Kinesso, Reprise, and Matterkind. With the merger, Matt Ware, the previous APAC head of Matterkind and Kinesso, moved to head up KINESSO as its new APAC CEO.

In a statement at the time, IPG explained that the collective strength of the three entities would enable KINESSO to unify the data derived from a brand's full marketing system into one renowned growth-driving capability.

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