Leila Fataar (GB)

A 30+ year wealth of hands-on, non-traditional leadership, she brings a vast body of work at the intersection of culture, creativity and commerce, cascading across multiple categories, markets and disciplines.

Her experience spans both senior brand-side roles at TONI&GUY, adidas and Diageo, as well as frontline through her own independent companies including a decade running the boutique, youth culture agency Spin, and since 2017, a new generation brand partner, Platform13.

A pioneer of the culture-led brand blueprint, Leila Fataar has a rare ability to speak the languages of culture, corporate and entrepreneurship, distilled in her debut 2025 book, “Culture-Led Brands”. She has spearheaded an approach from the boardroom to billboard that elevates cultural relevance from a marketing nice-to-have to a powerful driver of business growth. Her distinctive expertise lies in reading cultural signals and translating them into compelling brand narratives and activity that resonate with different audiences, all the while building resilience for businesses.

Highly regarded and well-connected, she is regularly sought out for her culture-based expertise, commentary and opinion pieces in global industry and trend publications such as Business of Fashion, Hurs, WARC, The Future Lab, Highsnobiety, Vogue Business, Digiday, WARC, The Drum, adweek and Campaign amongst others. She is a speaker at influential conferences such as ADE, D&AD, Apple Today, Eurobest, and more, and often appears as a provocative moderator and panelist at top conferences such as Cannes Lions, Advertising Week, madFest, YMS, and Social Media Week. She has also been a judge for D&AD New Blood and the Webby Awards, and guest lectured at a variety of schools such as Hyper Island, The One School and the University of East London and was profiled in the August 2025 Creative Leadership edition of Creative Review.