Looking for the famous Maria Devereux?

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The other Maria Devereux.

Maria is the Head of Innovation and Executive Creative Director at Accenture Song, North America. Based in Los Angeles, working across North America and usually found out at the magical intersection of creativity, innovation and humanity.

Previously Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Creative Director at Colenso BBDO, Cannes Lions Agency of the Decade (Pacific Region) for the last two decades, her passion for creativity is deeply ingrained. In her role at Accenture Song she’s working at the forefront of new realities and creative technology, helping bring to life David Droga’s vision to build the ‘the world’s largest tech powered creative group’.

She is currently ranked #1 Creative in New Zealand by The One Show, ranked #35th ECD globally by The Drum’s World Creative Rankings and was listed in Creativepool’s top 100 creative leaders for 2023. In 2020 she was awarded a Certificate of Excellence at Campaign Asia’s Women Leading Change Awards and in 2019 she was named in Adweek’s Creative 100. She's collected over 400 international and local awards for her work, has judged at D&AD, One Show, Clio, Spikes, Caples and New York Festivals and sat on the executive jury at Canada’s ADCC Awards, Gerety and Australia’s Award Awards and was Convener of Judges at the New Zealand Axis Awards.

Her passion for creative innovation helped build Pedigree SelfieSTIX - the world’s first doggie AR filters, light Auckland’s iconic harbor bridge with over 96,000 solar powered lights to demonstrate the city’s commitment to becoming 100% renewable, create a treehouse restaurant for Yellow Pages halfway up a redwood tree, an in-flight fashion show for Air New Zealand which took two years to receive civil aviation approval, a digital tool for NZ Breast Cancer Foundation which uses haptic technology to teach your hands how to check for breast cancer, wrap a New York water tower in 50 kilometres of yarn for D&AD’s call for entries and spend four weeks in an RV roaming from New York to Los Angeles to share the music of America from a Samsung ‘smartphone’ before influencers were even born (literally).

In 2016 she returned home to Colenso BBDO, the same place she started her career, winning six Cannes lions in her first six years as an Art Director. In addition to the 11+ years she spent at Colenso, Maria has held creative leadership roles at Special Group NZ and Y&R NZ.

Maria is passionate about the creative industries and in her role at Accenture Song, she’s uniquely positioned to explore how emerging technologies can enhance our creativity - not detract from it. With the rise of technology, we’re experiencing a loss of humanity. So with a belief that creativity has never been more important, Maria has recently developed ‘How to Stay Human’. Created in partnership with Dr Graham Mead, this platform consists of a podcast and a program which uncovers practical ways for us to stay connected to our humanity and more creative because of it.

Contact Info

Auckland, New Zealand.

+64 21 650 123

mariawdevereux@gmail.com