Janet Kestin

Janet Kestin is co-founder of Swim, a leadership lab for creative companies around the globe who want to develop fearless leaders.

Janet was Co-Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy Toronto with Swim partner Nancy Vonk for 13 years. Their teams delivered work like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, and garnered recognition including One Club and D&AD pencils and two Cannes Grand Prix. Janet has judged The One Show, D&AD, Cannes and many others. She was the foreman of the D&AD ‘Writing for Advertising’ jury in 2014 and is one of only 6 women whose work appears in D&AD’s The Copy Book: How some of the best advertising writers in the world write their advertising. Sad, but true.

In 2012 Janet and Nancy were on Advertising Age Magazine's 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising list, and they were among Creativity magazine’s Top 50 Most Creative People of ‘08. Authors of Pick Me, a staple in advertising schools from Texas to Turkey, their 2014 HarperCollins release, Darling, You Can’t Do Both (And Other Noise To Ignore On Your Way Up) was recently listed among Inc Magazine’s “top 60 books on leadership”. Janet speaks at companies, schools and organizations around the world seeking new ideas for advancing women's success.  In ‘16, Janet helped design the creative leadership stream at Factry, the ‘school of creativity sciences’, founded by Sid Lee leaders.