Five minutes with Michelle McGrath
Meet our Head of Operations & Project Management – Michelle McGrath
Say hello to our Head of Operations & Project Management, Michelle McGrath. With extensive experience at some of the world’s biggest agencies, working with global clients across markets and continents, Michelle knows what it takes to keep ambitious work moving behind the scenes. So, without further ado, let’s spend five minutes with Michelle McGrath.
Tell us about your career before you joined Fox Agency.
I have worked at some of the biggest global agencies, from the former Hill + Knowlton, to Ogilvy and Red Consultancy, with a few years in Sydney thrown in for good measure. Having spent most of my career agency side, and most of that working with global clients, it gave me the grounding in how creative and comms businesses actually run, in front and behind the scenes. Different agency models, different challenges, but the common thread that excites me is making sure the operational engine can keep up with ambitious client work.
What does your role as Head of Operations & Project Management at Fox Agency involve?
My role is behind the scenes, but don’t let that fool you – we are busy building a global operating model for Fox Agency to support global expansion, the kind of thing that lets us say yes to ambitious international work without quietly panicking behind the scenes. Commercial operations, contracts, procurement, resourcing, pricing, systems.
I’ve done this before, it’s the difference between growing globally on purpose versus growing globally by accident.
Can you tell us about a project where you’ve had a real impact on how Fox Agency operates – and why it mattered?
We took on the ambitious move to one professional services automation tool, to replace several different systems operating at Fox Agency this year and have been busy rolling it out. Nobody’s ever asked me to talk about resourcing models at a dinner party twice, but it’s the reason we can see profitability, delivery health and capacity clearly, rather than finding out something’s gone wrong three months too late.
What does great client experience look like to you, especially as Fox Agency works with bigger, more complex, international accounts?
Clients should never be able to tell which office is having a bad day. I have seen what it takes to keep that consistent for global accounts – clear contracts, predictable pricing, delivery that doesn’t wobble just because there’s a time zone involved.
Finally, tell us something interesting or unique about yourself?
I love to travel, and have lived, worked and travelled my way around the world, including seven years in Sydney and an Australian passport. Now I’m juggling contract negotiations and global client requests around three small humans and school holidays, which is basically Olympic training (and also explains why this took almost a year to write!).
