Who We Are

The Leadership Team

We're proud of our multi-disciplined and diverse leadership team

Steven Wolfe Pereira
Board Member

is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Encantos, the leading entertainment-driven edtech company helping kids learn 21st century skills through Storyteaching.

An award-winning Public Benefit Corporation, Encantos was recently named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in the world. An Emmy-nominated executive producer, Mr. Wolfe Pereira was named by Adweek as one of the "50 Most Indispensable Executives in Marketing, Media and Tech" as well as one of the top Chief Marketing Technology Officers. Mr. Wolfe Pereira has served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Datalogix (acquired by Oracle), Neustar (acquired by Golden Gate Capital) and Quantcast.

Mr. Wolfe Pereira has also held executive roles at Publicis Groupe, Univision and Akamai Technologies. He began his career in finance at The Blackstone Group, Salomon Smith Barney (Citi) and Violy, Byorum & Partners.Mr Wolfe Pereira is a proud member of the Latinx community and a powerful advocate for the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion at every level of both business and education. Mr. Wolfe Pereira joins the board of Whalar with a focus of assisting with the mission of liberating the creative voice and ensuring that multicultural talent is represented and celebrated.

Brad Smallwood
Board Member

Brad Smallwood was Facebook’s VP of Marketing Science who built and ran Facebook’s measurement practice for more than 12 years. Along the way, he helped design Facebook’s early advertising products and built out the strategy that put measurement and value at the core of how Facebook designed its advertising system. He was responsible for a variety of industry-first measurement products including FB polling, the FB conversion lift product, Nielsen Brandlift, Nielsen DAR/TAR, and Datalogix/Oracle Data Cloud ROI measurement to name a few.

Mr Smallwood joined Facebook in 2008, at a time when annual revenues had just topped $100 million. While there, he hired and oversaw a group of more than 500, who helped advertisers measure digital ad effectiveness and built industry leading analytical and measurement tools. Prior to joining Facebook, Smallwood was General Manager of Yahoo’s multi-billion dollar display advertising business. He also worked at startups Namezero, AllAdvantage and Revcube, where he developed a series of state-of-the-art ad targeting and ad serving techniques.

Mr Smallwood joins the board of Whalar to help guide the company towards its ambitions of continually building new industry standard measurement capabilities demonstrating the ROI of influencer marketing.

Karyn Spencer
‍‍‍‍‍‍Chief Marketing Officer

Karyn has spent over 20 years building unique initiatives for brands, traditional celebrities, and digital creators. After studying photography in college, she moved to Hollywood and worked her way up to become a talent agent, booking actors in film and TV. From there, she worked for Ashton Kutcher for five years, producing film, TV, and web content.

Since then, she’s worked with celebrities and influencers to collaborate with brands and scale the impact of their stories. Her previous roles include Head of Creators at Vine, VP at AT&T, and Director of Celebrity Partnerships & Influencer Marketing at Target. Everything Karyn does is through a lens of inclusion, equity, and a passion for representation.

Andrea Wong
‍‍‍‍‍Member of the Board

Andrea was previously President International for Sony Pictures Entertainment based in London. She oversaw Sony Pictures Television’s 18 overseas production companies, creating nearly 1,300 hours of entertainment around the world each year. Among her many achievements in this role, Andrea excitingly was instrumental in the creation of the TV series The Crown. She is also a Governor of the British Film Institute, and a Trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Victoria Bachan
‍‍‍‍‍Managing Director, Whalar Stars

Victoria is an experienced and creative talent manager who has helped launch brands, tours, and careers for some of the entertainment industry’s most interesting personalities and artists.
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After starting her career working for the producers of Coachella and Governor's Ball, Victoria moved on to work for the company that produced the largest, longest-running music festival in North America, the Vans Warped Tour. Joining Whalar in 2020, Victoria is leading the global expansion and reputation of Whalar Stars.

Jo Cronk
‍‍‍‍‍President, North America

With over 15 years media agency experience, Jo has lead holistic marketing strategy and investment strategy for global brands including Boots/Walgreens, Cadbury/Mondelez, PepsiCo and Warner Bros. In 2013, Jo moved from London to New York and prior to joining Whalar was a Business Lead at PHD leading multiple high-profile new business pitches, managing HBO and incubator start-up brands, responsible for Billings in excess of $150MM.

Niko Croskery
‍‍‍‍‍Chief Product and Innovation Officer

Niko was a member of the founding team of Whalar and is now responsible for all things product and tech. Hailing from the land of the long white cloud, Niko started his career as a commercial M&A lawyer in both NZ and the UK, before starting his own software and consultancy company. He has been involved with many tech & ecommerce startups, providing business, legal, strategy, product and marketing advice to over 300 clients in 13 countries.

Bob Greenberg
‍‍‍‍‍Vice Chairman of the Board

Bob, alongside his brother, founded the agency R/GA in 1977. R/GA now has 18 offices globally and over 2,000 employees. It has evolved from a world-class movie title shop, to a digital studio, to a major digital advertising agency, and today, to an all-in-one full-service agency.

Emma Harman
‍‍‍‍‍President, EMEA

Emma is an experienced Marketing and Sales leader having led commercial efforts globally for Universal Music Group, Talenthouse, and most recently Whalar EMEA.
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Emma’s career blends the world of talent, creativity, and technology where she has played a key role in championing creative voices from every background and discipline as an effective medium for brand storytelling.

Sir John Hegarty
‍‍‍‍‍Chairman of the Board

John is one of the world’s most awarded and respected Ad Men. For over six decades, he has been at the forefront of the creative advertising industry from the early days of Saatchi and Saatchi, to founding the global company Bartle Bogle and Hegarty.

Rob Horler
‍‍‍‍‍President & COO

Rob founded his own agency, which was the largest digital media agency in the UK between 2004 and 2008. He subsequently sold the business to Dentsu and went on to be the CEO of Dentsu Aegis in Northern Europe and then transferred to be their US CEO in 2015. During that time, Rob oversaw operations of some 25 companies, 14,000 employees and revenues of almost 2 billion dollars. He also oversaw the M&A activity for the US and was responsible for acquiring 9 companies. Most recently he was COO at Quantcast, a Silicon Valley based global ad tech leader.

James Street
‍‍‍‍‍Co-Founder

Dropping out of University in 2006 with Neil Waller, James co-founded their first business together. After a string of successful projects, the pair soon launched Shore Projects, a watch brand inspired by the British seaside which in its first year alone sold in over 30 countries. Noticing a key shift in the way consumers connected with brands, they were able to grow Shore using social media creative and influence. Rapid growth led to awards and recognition - one such prize being a week on Necker Island with Sir Richard Branson.
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On Necker Island, the idea for Whalar was born.

Roxanne Taylor
‍‍‍‍‍Member of the Board

Roxanne served as CMO of Accenture for over 10 ten years and has had a significant role in growing the company into one of the world’s leading brands. During her career Roxanne has been named among Forbes’ ‘World’s Most Influential CMOs’, selected as a ‘Change the Game’ Award Winner by Advertising Women of New York and is also on the Board of Directors of the Ad Council and a member of the Marketing 50 (M50).

Heena Agrawala
‍Chief Financial Officer

Heena has spent over 20 years in the advertising industry. Having started her career at Ogilvy, she continued on to various finance leadership roles at holding companies such as Omnicom and Publicis (Digitas), as well as at a UK based independent in-house agency.

In addition to optimizing business performance, Heena has also focused on bringing financial rigor and operational excellence to commercial relationships with clients such as Pfizer, Biogen, American Express, Delta, IBM, Glaxo, Unilever.
Heena has an MBA in Finance and a Masters degree in Accounting & Commerce.

Neil Waller
‍‍‍‍‍Co-Founder

Dropping out of University in 2006 with James Street, Neil co-founded their first business together. After a string of successful projects, the pair soon launched Shore Projects, a watch brand inspired by the British seaside which in its first year alone sold in over 30 countries.Noticing a key shift in the way consumers connected with brands, they were able to grow Shore using social media creative and influence. Rapid growth led to awards and recognition - one such prize being a week on Necker Island with Sir Richard Branson.
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On Necker Island, the idea for Whalar was born.

Heena Agrawala

Chief Finance Officer

Victoria Bachan

Managing Director of Whalar Stars

Jo Cronk

President, North America

Niko Croskery

Chief Product and Innovation Officer

Bob Greenberg

Vice Chairman of the Board

Emma Harman

President, EMEA

Sir John Hegarty

Chairman of the Board

Rob Horler

CEO

Brad Smallwood

Board Member

Karyn Spencer

Chief Marketing Officer

James Street

Co Founder

Roxanne Taylor

Board Member

Neil Waller

Co Founder

Steven Wolfe Pereira

Board Member

Andrea Wong

Board Member