Modernizing Recruitment
Humanizing Talent
Revitalizing Organizations
Peony is a boutique talent recruitment and advisory practice servicing the media, advertising, marketing, technology and entertainment industries. Peony’s mission is to modernize recruitment, humanize talent, and revitalize organizations through expert search and assessment process anchored in design thinking, human values, and cross-functional competencies.
Proudly independent and privately owned, Peony provides an un-biased high-touch approach to talent recruitment for innovators. All talent searches and advisory work are highly confidential, for both candidates and clients. We do not advertise the roles or push resumes around.
Learn more about us on this AdWeek article.
We are:
Graceful Truth-tellers
Creative Investigators
Passionate Experts
Unbiased Advisors
Lifelong Students
Advisors
Suzanne Alcantara
Assistant Dean / Career Development at USC Annenberg School for Communication
Jen Whelan
SVP of Marketing at Criteo
Sara Mascall
VP of Technology, Media and Telecommunications at Wall Street Journal
Marijke Van Niekerk
Creative Director, Tribal Worldwide
Services
We work with a limited selection of clients at a time in order to dedicate the right amount of effort to each search. This means that we probably say “No” more than we say “Yes.” But it also means that we strive for excellence in what we take on and are focused on finding you the right candidate vs. a candidate.
Talent Recruitment
Specializing in Media, Advertising, Marketing, Technology and Entertainment, we gain a deep understanding of your business values and objectives in order to define and design the right candidate strategies to help you win.
Because the companies with the best people win.
Organizational Advisory
We help you to strategize on what type of talent your organization needs in order to achieve its vision. Whether assessing existing framework or helping you design a new one, our ultimate goal is to drive organizational growth and positive performance via an unbiased expert perspective.
Because your success depends on how well your people are organized behind your goals and what you need to get them there.
Career Development
Private and group coaching sessions for career advancement, retention strategies and development programs.
Because life becomes a reflection of our decisions, and we help you make the best ones.
Mandana Mellano
FOUNDER | PRESIDENT
A modern creative marketer, Mandana has held leadership positions at some of the most iconic agencies in the world: Ogilvy, Fallon, Group M, and Kastner & Partners. She has been the strategic media force behind brands such as Activision, Red Bull, Porsche, Cisco, and Qualcomm over the past two decades.
Judging awards, winning awards, building teams, re-structuring teams, and helping brands of all sizes grow, Mandana believes that recruiting and retaining the right talent is the only differentiator between the winning companies and, well,… the non-winning companies. She is inspired by a human-centered approach to defining roles and employing a more rigorous assessment of competencies that shape modern marketing. Mandana leads every talent search herself and is fully dedicated to help her clients gain a competitive edge through unmatched expertise and connections to best-in-class talent.
Mandana has served as the Chair of the Mobile Marketing Association for multiple years — driving national education and innovation in location-based technology and marketing.
Featured as one of “The Most Exceptional Women” in Marketing and Advertising by
the Drum, you can learn more about Mandana here or drop her a line below.
