Senior Leader · Growth & Executive Strategy

Cherish
Bailey

Nearly 20 years driving growth.
I care about the work. I care more about the people doing it.

Scroll
Cherish Bailey

I'm a senior leader in growth and executive strategy. I think about the goal, the actions needed to reach it, and I make it happen.

Nearly 20 years in this work has taken me through program management, account leadership, new business, and growth strategy. I've been on the biggest pitch in WPP's history, helped stand up one of AKQA's first truly global accounts, and now operate at the executive level: contributing to the Americas CEO's Monthly Business Review, developing executive reports and briefings for global leadership, and building the infrastructure that governs how the region grows. I know how to pull in subject matter experts when the work calls for it, build agentic workflows when efficiency demands it, and rally a team to the finish line when everything depends on it.

What I bring isn't one discipline. It's the ability to move fluidly between growth strategy, executive partnership, and hands-on execution, with the resourcefulness to find unconventional paths when conventional ones stall, and the pattern recognition, after nearly 20 years, to see around corners before others do.

What I Believe

Growth chased out of fear isn't growth. It's desperation.

I've watched organizations pursue the wrong clients, the wrong projects, the wrong opportunities because leadership felt they had to hit a number. It never serves the client. It never serves the team. And it never serves the mission. The organizations that grow well aren't the ones chasing everything. They're the ones who know exactly what they stand for, and only pursue what maps to that.

The best growth work starts at the executive level. What has leadership committed to? What are the priority focus areas this year? Every growth decision, every pursuit, every dollar invested should have a clear line back to those answers. When it does, teams move with conviction. When it doesn't, they're just busy.

The best leaders are relentless about that connection. They don't just tell teams what to do, they make sure everyone understands why it matters right now, to this company, in this moment. That clarity is the whole job.

On AI: I'm excited about what's now possible. Over the last year I've built 11 AI agents for growth work: client briefings, scoping tools, pitch development, frontier research. What used to take days takes hours. Twenty years of knowledge is what makes those tools sharp. That combination is what I bring to every team I work with.

Selected Work

Impact Stories

Organizational Design · Growth Strategy · Executive Partnership

Building the Growth Function for an Entire Region

When AKQA consolidated multiple regional studios into a single Americas P&L, there was no growth infrastructure to go with it. I partnered directly with the CEO and CCO to build it from the ground up. That meant designing the executive operating cadence, establishing OKR frameworks, standardizing performance reporting, and creating the intake and prioritization systems that govern how the organization screens and advances strategic opportunities. Today, a three-person team runs the full commercial engine for the entire region: pipeline health, strategic pursuits, outbound strategy, positioning, and growth operations. I did the same work in parallel at the account level, standing up a newly formed global account by defining the leadership model, decision frameworks, and ways of working for a team spanning multiple regions. The infrastructure in both cases came first. Everything else follows from it.

Americas
Regional Scope
5
Functional Workstreams Built
3
Person Team, Full Regional Function
Internal Operations · Knowledge Systems · AI

Building the Growth OS: From Scattered Knowledge to a Competitive Advantage

Great work was being done across AKQA's global network, but it was fragmented. Insights and case studies that could sharpen a pitch were buried in local drives and organizational memory. I saw it as a growth problem: competitive advantage left on the table every time we started from scratch. So I built the infrastructure to fix it: a global case study repository, a streamlined system for perspectives and pitch materials, and a Growth OS layer on top: searchable, curated, and designed to surface our best thinking at the moment a team needs it. Then I took it further. I built a suite of 11 growth agents that put the OS to work: Client Overview briefings that compress hours of research into minutes, Scoping tools that accelerate how we size opportunities, Pitch Agents that help teams develop and pressure-test ideas faster, Frontier Briefings that keep the team current on what's possible, and Case Study Writers that turn completed work into pitch-ready stories. The result is an organization that learns from itself and shows up with more conviction.

Global
Growth OS
11
Agents Created
35%
Faster Pitch Prep
New Business · Pitch Strategy

From the First Brief to the Win

My involvement starts at the first touch. Before a team spends a day on a brief, I'm asking the questions that matter: Are we right for this client? Are they right for us? Once we're in, I work with the team to wrestle the brief itself. Is the client asking the right question? Are we solving the right problem? Where is the business headed, and if I were the CMO or CDO, would this pitch actually move the needle? When we land on the right solve, I rally the team to build it: how do we tell this story, how do we show up in a way that goes beyond what our competitors will bring, how do we price to win, and how do we bring frontier thinking to the table, showing what's possible today that wasn't possible two years ago. The result is a track record built across 35+ pursuits, and wins that account for some of the agency's most significant client relationships.

13 years
AKQA Tenure
35+
Pursuits Led
Americas
Regional Scope
The Arc

Career
Timeline

The job titles changed. The approach did not: figure out the goal, map the path, get it done. Each role was a deliberate step, adding a new layer of the business to my operating toolkit. The result is a growth leader who understands the organization, not just the funnel.

Feb 2025 – Present
Senior Director, Growth
AKQA · Atlanta, GA

Partnered with senior leadership to build the regional growth function from the ground up as AKQA consolidated multiple studios into a single Americas P&L. Built the operating infrastructure, OKR frameworks, and agentic workflow methodology that now runs the commercial engine for the region.

Jan 2023 – Feb 2025
Director of Growth
AKQA · Atlanta, GA

Led growth and new business strategy across the agency while serving on Atlanta's senior leadership team and as an escalation point for Miami. Helped build one of AKQA's first truly global account teams.

Dec 2021 – Jan 2023
Chief of Staff
AKQA · Atlanta, GA

Partnered with a newly elevated Managing Partner across a complex multi-market portfolio, including winning The Coca-Cola Company's global business for WPP, the largest pitch in WPP's history, and standing up WPP Open X to run the account globally.

Aug 2019 – Dec 2021
Business Development Director
AKQA · Atlanta, GA

Led new business and marketing for the Atlanta studio, growing annual revenue from $3M to $20M+.

Jul 2013 – Aug 2019
Management Supervisor → Account Supervisor → Senior Account Executive
AKQA · Atlanta, GA

Joined as employee ten and grew through three titles over six years, leading accounts across Delta Air Lines, Chick-fil-A, and BMW.

2010 – 2013
Senior Project Manager
SapientRazorfish · Sagepath · THINK (LiquidHub)

Progressed through senior PM roles at three digital agencies, leading complex cross-functional programs including work on Bridgestone.

2007 – 2010
Account Executive
Bep Inc · Chicago, IL

First role at a 15-person agency in Chicago, reporting directly to the President.

Voices

What People Say

Cherish is an excellent partner to her clients. She particularly shines by learning the company's needs and making decisions from our perspective. Her creative thinking is matched only by her organizational skill-set, which makes for a perfect balance in an account partner. Even when presented with highly ambiguous projects, she consistently comes through by bringing the right team together to deliver quality recommendations and action plans.

Scott Struletz
GM, B2B2C Marketing & Engagement · Delta Air Lines

Cherish is the swiss army knife of the agency, and a damn good one. She can jump in almost anywhere that she is needed and provide value to the team. She is extremely personable and really cares about her teams and clients. Her wide breadth of connections across the network is incredible, and she uses it to bring to bear the best talent for the projects we have been entrusted with.

Senior Colleague
AKQA · Peer Review

All the success you had in the role is entirely attributable to you and your character. You've consistently been present to remind me of things I'm overlooking and to show me my blindspots.

Roman Ptakowski
Managing Partner, AKQA · Global Client Lead, Coca-Cola
How I Work

Operating
Principles

I.

Define what we're making

Before anything else, I want to know what success looks like, specifically. What are we making? What does done look like? What changes for the business when this works? Getting that right at the start shapes every decision that follows: the team, the process, the tools, the timeline.

II.

Clarity is kindness

Ambiguity costs teams time they don't have. Clear expectations, honest tradeoffs, and a shared definition of done: that's the foundation of a team that moves well together. Clarity isn't a style choice. It's how alignment happens.

III.

Resourceful by design

You don't always need a big budget, a big team, or a long timeline to do great work. I've learned to find unconventional paths to results, whether that's pulling in the right SME, building an agentic workflow, or just outworking the problem. The constraint is rarely resources. It's usually creativity and will.

Beyond the Work

Leadership
& Service

The same values that drive the work: human-first thinking, showing up for the long haul, building communities that function.

Board Member
Remerge Atlanta

Faith-based nonprofit building communities of peace and activating others for the work of reconciliation across Atlanta.

Board
Board Member
Oak Grove Elementary Foundation

Supporting the educational foundation that funds enrichment programs and resources for students and families at Oak Grove Elementary.

Board
Family Partner Volunteer
Lighthouse Family Retreat · 5 Years

Strengthening families living through childhood cancer through restorative retreats and community. Five years of sustained commitment to families navigating one of life's hardest seasons.

5 Years
Volunteer
Decatur City Church

Active volunteer in the local church community in Decatur, Georgia.

Volunteer

Atlanta native. Mom of three. Married. Happiest in a garden or a growth strategy.

Let's Connect

Let's
build
something.

Working on something interesting in growth, executive strategy, or building high-performing teams? Reach out and let's find 30 minutes.

✉ cherish.bailey@gmail.com in LinkedIn Profile