The Shipyard Grows Senior Leadership Team with James Ou and Jessica Branson

​The Shipyard, one of the nation’s fastest-growing independent advertising agencies, is continuing to expand its senior leadership team with the additions of James Ou, VP of data intelligence, and Jessica Branson, VP, group account director. Effective immediately, James and Jessica will help the team to continue its impressive momentum through 2025 and beyond.

“As The Shipyard evolves, we are thrilled to welcome Jess and James to the team,” said Matt Bruot, president at The Shipyard Collective. “Both of them have already significantly impacted our work, demonstrating exceptional leadership and expertise across the ever-evolving analytics and media landscape. Their addition to the team reinforces The Shipyard’s commitment to our engineering brand love philosophy and our mission to build performance-driven brands that audiences love.”

James brings more than a decade of experience driving business transformation through data, technology, and analytics. Most recently, James successfully led teams at Droga5 in optimising data capabilities to drive client value, providing direction on data analysis, survey and test design, and performance optimisation.

Jessica is a seasoned marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience working with strategic consultancies and advertising agencies. Her skills were developed at her own consulting firm and during her time at Omnicom, where she excelled at driving results and fostering meaningful client relationships. Jessica brings her people-first approach to life through her work, demonstrating that collaboration is key to delivering results.

Prior to these new hire moves, The Shipyard announced William Gelner as chief creative officer and the formation of The Shipyard Collective, a holistic new operating model leveraging craft and creative disciplines in paid, owned, and earned media. You can read more about The Collective here.