Mother Appoints Spotify’s Oriel Davis-Lyons as Chief Creative Officer in New York

Mother has announced the hiring of Oriel Davis-Lyons as chief creative officer for the creative company’s New York office. 

Davis-Lyons joins from Spotify where he has been since 2020, most recently serving as head of creative. Prior, Oriel held creative roles at Droga5, R/GA in the US, Colenso BBDO and Special Group in New Zealand. At Spotify Davis-Lyons honed a modern, social approach to marketing across a variety of projects, including Wrapped, the worlds’ largest marketing campaign that reaches hundreds of millions of people each year. 

He will bring that same modern approach to Mother where he will oversee the creative output for clients including Target, Dave & Buster’s, Amica, and Panera, among others.

During the 2016 election, Oriel wrote a viral spot entitled ‘Role Models’ for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He was instrumental in continuing Droga5’s long-running Seize the Awkward platform in partnership with the Ad Council. As a creative entrepreneur, Oriel founded a WFH-wear brand, Corpleisure. And driven by his passion to bring the next generation of creative talent into the industry, Oriel created the ONE School US, the first online portfolio school for Black creatives. Students are taught by the industry’s best Black creatives and to date, the school has graduated 120+ students who are now working at some of the industry’s top agencies and brands.

Commenting on his move, Oriel said "To me, Mother has always felt less like an ad agency and more like a place where creativity is the core product and great advertising is just one of the ways it shows up in the world. That multi-hyphenate approach to creativity is how I’ve always felt most comfortable working and now we’ve got the opportunity to build an environment where we embrace that and empower the world’s best creative people to make the kind of work they couldn’t do anywhere else." 

“Oriel’s vision for our industry has a gravitational pull you can feel. He’s an entrepreneur at heart who has a proven record of harnessing creativity to change the world, and he’s the biggest believer in the next generation of talent. These special traits are core to what makes Mother different, and it will be our privilege to witness how his vision impacts the future of our business,” said Teri Miller, president & partner of Mother in the US.

“Every decision we've made this year is to build Mother into a creative company for the next generation. This means to have the highest work standards in the world, the most modern creative outputs, and with a group of people who put each other first in order to meet this ambitious goal. Oriel Davis-Lyons is the perfect leader for this next chapter at Mother,” said Joe Staples, CCO & partner, Mother in the US.

Oriel assumed the role in January.