meet the jury
ALASTAIR MERRY
Prior to founding Flower Shop, Alastair spent more than two decades honing his craft as a copywriter, at TBWA, BBH, and Wieden+Kennedy, including seven years on Nike, where he led Creative across the US, Europe, and the Middle East.
Since founding Flower Shop in 2023, Alastair has blown up statues for Tonal, led the agency to a Super Bowl spot for On, created a parallel universe for Tom Brady the Baseball player, and brought a pair of mannequins to life for Crocs.
Under his Creative leadership, Flower Shop has been recognized as Ad Age’s Best Newcomer in 2024, Ad Age Small Agency of the Year (Northeast, Gold) 2025, and Ad Age Small Agency of the Year (11–45 employees) in 2026.
Amy Wertheimer is currently the head of content production at Comcast’s in-house agency Xfinity Creative.
Amy has produced some of the most iconic spots, including Tubi’s “Interruption” and Snickers’ “Game” with Betty White. Her body of work has collectively garnered Cannes Lions, Clios, Super Clios, Emmy nominations, One Show pencils, Effies, AICP recognition and more.
Amy was most recently the executive producer for Mischief at No Fixed Address, creating buzzworthy content for Tubi, Peet’s Coffee and other brands. She previously spent more than two decades at BBDO New York, rising from assistant producer to EVP, Group Executive Producer. She oversaw multiple global accounts, most notably Mars Inc., including their chocolate and petcare brands. At BBDO, Amy produced some of the agency’s most famous work for clients such as Snickers, FedEx, Guinness, AT&T and Pepsi.
Amy graduated with a B.A. in Communications from the University of Michigan. She lives in New York with her husband, their two sons and their dog.
Amy Wertheimer
Austin DeJonge
Over the past decade, Austin DeJonge has created work for a range of clients, from commercials at the Oscars to Snapchats at the Super Bowl, earning recognition from Cannes Lions, Clio Sports, The One Show, Effies, and the Webbys, among others, for brands including Gatorade, Kroger, and FanDuel.
Currently, Austin is a Creative Director on FanDuel’s in-house creative team.
Hank Perlman
Hank started in advertising as a copywriter, working on brands such as Nike and ESPN. In 1995, with his art director partner, Rick McQuiston, Hank created the ESPN “This is SportsCenter” campaign. He went on to work at MTV as a producer and director and then started hungryman in 1997 with fellow director, Bryan Buckley.
Laura Petruccelli
At just 35 years old, Laura Petruccelli has joined the elite 1% of female agency founders, co-founding her creative agency nice&frank in 2022. In just two years, nice&frank earned Ad Age’s prestigious Newcomer Agency of the Year award in 2024. As a proud queer woman, Laura is leading the charge in reshaping the advertising industry, joining the ranks of impactful female founders on Inc.’s Female Founders 500.
Under Petruccelli’s leadership, nice&frank has created breakthrough campaigns for brands like Häagen-Dazs, Amazon, Nutrafol, Frito-Lay, Graza, Ollie, Sanrio, as well as ŌURA’s widely celebrated and awarded campaigns, ‘Give Us the Finger,’ and most recently ‘Subtle Power.’ Additional 2026 highlights include celebrating the art of slowing down and savoring with Häagen-Dazs’ ‘Take Your Sweet Time,’ which premiered at this year’s GRAMMYs.
Petruccelli attributes the agency’s rapid success to its commitment to fostering trust and empowering clients to make courageous creative choices by being more honest throughout the process together. This philosophy is embodied in nice&frank’s signature collaborative workshops, Frankshop and Frankstorm. Internally, she’s driving innovation with initiatives like “4in24.” The challenge is for every team member—not just those in the creative department—to generate four ideas within 24 hours, proving that creativity is a shared responsibility and made better through collaboration.
Holden Rasche
Holden Rasche is a creative director at Mischief (for now). He's had his fair share of his own ideas die, and frequently, more. So he gets it. He’s also killed his unfair share of ideas, so he’s also part of the problem.
Previously his ideas died at places like WKNY and TBWA/Chiat/Day NY. And the ones that lived? Nothing to write home about. At least, that's what his parents said. He's excited for this incredibly convenient excuse as to why he didn't participate or win this year - "he's not allowed."
And then the thing I've been using as a headshot is attached.
Lora Schulson
Not only is Lora Schulson the inaugural POTY, she is also the Global Chief Production Officer at 72andSunny, where she leads production at the intersection of creativity, innovation, and culture. She believes how ideas are made is just as important as the ideas themselves - and that great production drives both business growth and cultural impact.
As a founding leader of 72andSunny New York, Lora has helped shape the agency's evolution while building a modern production discipline that enables ambitious creative work across regions, clients, and platforms.
Over the past 20+ years, she has partnered with many of the world's most ambitious brands to deliver award-winning, culturally resonant work - recognized by the Cannes Lions, Emmys, Clios, The One Show, Webbys, AICP, and more. She has been nominated for Ad Age's Head of Production of the Year (2025 and 2026), spoken at Cannes Lions on the future of production, and has been recognized in the Adweek 50, Adweek's Creative 100, and Business Insider's 30 Most Creative Women in Advertising.
Known for building high-performing teams and making the seemingly impossible possible, Lora is helping redefine what modern production can be - bringing together exceptional craft, emerging technology, and human creativity to unlock better ideas and better business outcomes. She is also a passionate advocate for diverse representation, believing the strongest work is built by teams with different perspectives and experiences.
As a native New Yorker raised in SoHo, Lora's childhood ambitions of becoming an art curator and a lawyer converged in a career that blends artistic vision with strategic problem-solving = Production. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Nick Kaplan
Nick Kaplan is an award-winning creative director and founder/CCO of creative agency Another Thing. Before embarking on agency entrepreneurship, he led and created iconic work at agencies like Wieden and Kennedy, Barton f Graf, 72andSunny and Le Truc.
He’s haunted by a dead idea from a 2007 supermarket pitch.
Paul Caiozzo
Paul Caiozzo is the Chief Creative Officer at Tombras. Over the years, his work has ended up in places like the Smithsonian, MoMA and Poster House, and occasionally in less expected places, like Saturday Night Live and CNN. Two of his campaigns, “Whopper Freakout” and “Help I Want to Save a Life,” were included in Taschen’s Game Changers, a book about the work that helped shape modern advertising.
Before Tombras, Paul founded two agencies, including Supernatural, an AI-powered shop launched before generative AI became mainstream. Outside advertising, he co-wrote a short film that premiered at Sundance, collaborated on an installation for the Walker Art Center, and was a writer on a Universal Pictures documentary about Iron Maiden that was released in theaters worldwide earlier this year.
Paul is also a general and limited partner in two venture capital firms and advises several startups.
Mina Mikhael
A multi-award winning Egyptian creative living in Brooklyn, Mina Mikhael currently serves as Executive Creative Director and Partner at Courage New York. From helping announce Kobe’s retirement to having Deadpool rag on David Beckham for the World Cup, using Danny Trejo to lift up caregivers or giving Kermit a platform to speak to a greener adidas future, driving Michael (B.) Jordan down the Emmy-winning NBA Lane or launching an entire F1 team onto the grid, Mina has spent over a decade mashing pop culture into sports storytelling.
His body of work includes brand campaigns for the NBA, Meta, adidas, PlayStation, FIFA, EA Sports, AT&T, Amazon Music and more. Mina has always been at the intersection of sports advertising, helping brands marry culture with filmic story telling, earning accolades such as (3) Emmys, League of the Year, Clio Gold in design, and Clio Sports Golds nearly every season along the way.
He believes Kobe is the second GOAT, Underøath are kings, and Survivor is the best TV you're not watching.
Thom Glover
Thom Glover is an Emmy-nominated Chief Creative Officer, writer and founder of American Haiku, a New York-based creative company focused on creating cinematic worlds for brands and in culture.
Through American Haiku, which launched in May 2024, Glover has created ambitious worlds for brands including New Balance, Chase Sapphire, Yahoo & Mozilla, and developing platforms for OpenAI, Starbucks & Tiffany & Co., among others. His work blends filmmaking, narrative design and brand strategy, often creating narratives and characters that extend across film, digital platforms and live cultural moments.
Prior to founding American Haiku, Glover spent a decade at Droga5 in New York, where he led the Meta/Facebook account during a period of sustained creative success and developed iconic campaigns for brands including Hennessy, Harley-Davidson, Under Armour, and Lululemon.
Beyond advertising, Glover works across film and cultural projects. He wrote Awful Dreams, recent recipient of 'Best Horror' at the New York International Film Awards and provided creative direction on Daughters by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, which won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.
Alongside his commercial and film work, Glover co-founded and ran The Great Brain Cell Sacrifice, a wine company created to fund literacy initiatives and build libraries for children.
Rachel Frederick
Born and raised in the Midwest, but a longtime resident of New York, Rachel has an eye for detail, an obsessive work ethic, and a laugh so loud you can hear it five miles away if the wind is just right.
For more than 20 years, she has led award-winning work at agencies both small and large, including Droga5, Johannes Leonardo, adam&eveNYC, BBDO NY and Ogilvy. And went freelance this past year, never looking back. Not one to be pinned down to a single genre, she’s made work for brands including Oscar Mayer, UNICEF, Shake Shack, JetBlue, GE Aerospace, Audi, VW and IBM, among many others. Her work has been recognized by Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD and The Webby Awards, among others.
Beyond making the work, Rachel is passionate about helping the next generation of creatives make theirs. She co-founded The PrePros, a free educational series that helps emerging creatives learn more about production, and previously co-founded and led D5in10 Academy at Droga5, a free educational program created to help more creatives break into the advertising industry. She’s taught at the School of Visual Arts, mentored through MAIP, served on the Print and OOH jury for The One Show, been a One Club portfolio reviewer, judged the SVA BFA Design and Advertising Portfolio Review and served on the Grand Jury for the New York Festival. She was also named an Adweek & ADCOLOR Champion for her work with D5in10.
Rachel currently works as a freelance Executive Creative Director and art director and lives in Brooklyn with her co-worker and dog, Otter. And she can’t wait to resurrect some ads with you all.
Steve Horn
Steve Horn is a Primetime Emmy-nominated copywriter who also draws. He’s currently Partner & Executive Creative Director at Courage New York, the first U.S. office of Canada’s fastest-growing independent creative agency.
Before moving to New York, Steve lived in Chicago. Before that, he was born, raised, and educated in Madison, Wisconsin (plus a brief stint in Galway, Ireland). So, yes, he does enjoy hot dairy and cold beer.
Steve’s work is in the permanent archive at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and he’s been awarded almost every major award for advertising including the Titanium Cannes Lion, the Grand Clio, the GRANDY, two Sports Emmy, over a dozen One Show and D&AD pencils, and…wait for it…some Webbys! Steve was also featured in the AdWeek 100 as one of the industry’s “Most Innovative and Inspiring Individuals.”
When he’s not working Steve enjoys playing with his daughter, cooking, reading, hooping, and walking many miles over New York City’s many bridges and boroughs (also with his daughter).
