Meet the women forging their way through the industry in The Drum's 50 Under 30 UK

Here you'll find the first 10 individuals chosen by our industry panel.

Lisa Targett, UK general manager, Tribe

Moving to London in 2011 after graduating from the University of Melbourne, Lisa Targett worked first as digital business development manager at the Telegraph Media Group before spending two years in Sydney as digital sales executive at Nine Entertainment Co (NEC) – Microsoft and Channel Nine's joint-venture – harnessing registered data to drive premium, personalised storytelling (and picking up an award for Netflix's 2015 launch campaign along the way). This evolved into content marketing and customer-generated advertising, and when NEC’s joint-venture with Daily Mail Australia was discontinued she moved over to join the publisher as group account director.

With experience spanning multiple markets for leading global media houses, she returned to London in 2016 as senior agency partner at MailOnline before joining Tribe as its UK general manager in July 2017, charged with leading the UK expansion of the influencer marketplace that connects social media influencers with brands.

In her first eight months in charge, UK monthly market revenues helped the company to break even and, under Targett's leadership, the UK now accounts for nearly 50% of the company's global revenues, exceeding forecasts.

Lucy Atkins, director, Infused Media

From starting her marketing career in 2014 as an apprentice at Manchester creative agency Creation ADM before going on to several roles in content creation and business development, Lucy Atkins has experienced many aspects of digital marketing in a short space of time, working with many business owners along the way.

Now operating her own marketing agency, the Blackburn-based Infused Media, she works alongside clients across the UK to build their businesses via creative marketing solutions, with her client base ranging from public sector clients such as the NHS through to national environmental and drainage company Mantank Environmental Services.

Lara Ferris, strategist, Possible

Lara Ferris got her first taste of digital marketing in 2014 when she moved to Paris and worked for a small French-speaking beauty and cosmetics PR agency. Being the youngest person in the agency she was put in charge of influencers.

She then worked for a year in Milan on localisation and content for Yoox, part of the Net-a-Porter Group, where she learnt comms planning and digital strategy by working on site builds, CRM, search engine marketing and editorial for a raft of international luxury brands.

Moving back to London in July 2017, she started as a strategist intern at Possible and then had a stint at Wieden+Kennedy working on Nike, Bumble and Sainsbury's, before Possible lured her back in January this year with a permanent position.

Having already packed a lot into her 25 years, she has since played a key role in pitch wins – including a big fish retail client – and carried out audience research in Brazil and Mexico for Bayer. She took over the strategy of the Aston Martin account, went deep on the purchase journey for a motor manufacturer, dug into blockchain, trade trends and cryptocurrency for HSBC and built a micro-influencer strategy.

Joanna Tong, co-founder and chief operating officer, Playrcart

With an MEng in Computer Science from University College London, Joanna Tong has some solid tech credentials and, since graduating in 2011, has led initiatives at two of the world's largest and most successful tech companies, Microsoft and Facebook, in the areas of technical evangelism, games and platform partnerships and enterprise SaaS – most recently as a founding team member of the Workplace by Facebook product where she drove sales, growth, customer success, marketing and partnerships across the EMEA region, as well as acting as a figurehead for the product, speaking at Facebook's F8 developer conference to over 4,000 attendees.

In December 2017 she co-founded Playrcart and, as chief operating officer, is charged with driving growth, strategy, fundraising and hiring for the video commerce company which aims to turn any online video into a store.

Hannah Watters, senior planner, Proximity London

Hannah Watters joined customer experience agency Proximity London as a planner in 2016 and was promoted to senior planner at the start of this year.

Over the last 12 months she has helped drive award-winning strategies for a number of clients, including acting as strategist on the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s (RNLI) ‘Communication Saves Lives’ campaign – the RNLI was the first charity in the UK to ask every supporter for express permission to keep in touch, making it the UK’s first full re-permission campaign.

Watters also worked on Proximity London’s ‘Who knew?’ DRTV ad for Guide Dogs and is lead strategist on the Virgin Holidays account, bringing human insight to the fore to create individualised experiences for their customers, while working with partners to maximise cutting-edge marketing technology.

Actively involved in the wider agency, she is responsible for initiatives to ensure the agency remains at the forefront of new insights, technology and customer experience innovation. She is the gate-keeper of the agency’s insight tools and budget across data planning, strategy and UX, and has successfully built a business case to bolster the agency’s digital insight tools and training over the next 12 months.

She also arranges ‘Lunch & Learn’ sessions to share, debate and inspire thinking, and is a mentor to junior strategists.

Rhiannon Stroud, strategy lead, Synergy Creative

Rhiannon Stroud joined employee engagement agency Synergy Creative two years ago. Her work bridges the gap between strategic and creative teams, and has already been appointed to Synergy's leadership team following a promotion to a senior strategic position with her own team.

At Synergy, Stroud gets under the skin of clients like IHG, Lidl and RBS to shape their employer brand engagement and internal comms strategies – creating seamless employee experiences across every channel, from intranets and bespoke apps to social networks, VR and beyond.

Stroud was recently honoured by the Institute of Internal Communications as the UK's Best Communicator Under 30.

Ruchita Nathalal, associate director, Publicis Media

Ruchita Nathalal joined Publicis Groupe's graduate scheme in 2013 and was swiftly promoted to senior programmatic executive and later programmatic manager. Working across a number of clients including Samsung, Cineworld and Travelodge, Nathalal also helped to develop Starcom's mobile programmatic proposition. She played a pivotal role in transitioning AOD, Publicis Groupe's trading desk, helping to establish the UK programmatic strategy and activation team in Starcom and Spark Foundry.

In 2016, she joined Run, a Publicis-acquired cross-screen DMP and DSP, to help spearhead its launch and expansion across EMEA. She helped to grow Run's global presence from one to 11 active markets over the course of a year. In her latest role as associate director she has been helping craft the go-to-market strategy for Publicis Media Precision, overseeing the client success team based in the UK and US, ensuring delivery of all client KPIs as well as leading the audience management strategy and implementation of an enterprise DMP solution for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles across eight European markets.

Jana Damanhouri, global head of social, Jungle Creations

Jana Damanhouri is the global head of social at Jungle Creations – one of the most-viewed media properties in the world. A combination of media owner and creative social marketing agency, it creates video content for the likes of Baileys, McDonald's, WWF and Virgin which is distributed to an online community of over 65 million followers.

Damanhouri oversees the company's social media strategy, building audiences and driving views through the distribution of entertaining and engaging content across its channels.

Leading a social team of 15 people in London and New York, she also manages the Jungle Creations creative studio team of nine who create dozens of original videos every week.

In addition to her work at Jungle, Damanhouri runs two successful YouTube channels, 'Jana Vlogs' and 'Jana Hisham', which have more than 300,000 subscribers. She created the channels when she was 16 years-old to share her perspective on life in London as a young Saudi woman.

Kyra Borella, biddables broker, Bountiful Cow

Three years into her media career, having previously worked as a biddable account executive at Starcom Mediavest and then Carat UK, Kyra Borella joined Bountiful Cow in February this year as a biddable broker, responsible for planning and buying search and social for The7stars' media agency startup.

At Bountiful Cow, Borella manages a variety of clients and won a £1m travel client in her first three months in the job, having been poached from top-five UK media giant Carat where she had made her name for herself as both an expert client handler and team leader, delivering successful public awareness campaigns for the Department for Education and Home Office, Public Health England, Stoptober and Get Into Teaching.

These campaigns saw Borella introduce new standards for brand safety, with the government running sexual health awareness campaigns on social media for the first time. A tabloid disaster waiting to happen, 'Snapchat Sex Education' instead became a controversy-free success for the government under her stewardship.

Laura Visick, social media director, FCB Inferno

As social media director at FCB Inferno, Laura Visick leads and manages cross-platform social channel and content strategy, running a team of six social and content strategists and community managers for clients including BMW UK, Uefa, Oreo, Havaianas Europe and Sport England.

A multimedia journalism degree and background in search and SEO have helped set her up for a fast-paced, ever-changing digital industry where she can often switch between the commercial demands of a client like Huawei and purpose-driven work such as Pearson's 'Project Literacy'.

Earlier this year Visick set up the influencer marketing arm at FCB Inferno – an initiative that has seen the agency run pan-European campaigns for multiple clients, with Visick working on multiple award-winning campaigns including the Cannes Grand Prix winning 'Project Literacy' campaign for Pearson and Uefa's 'Together #WePlayStrong' campaign which picked up a bronze for a multi-channel campaign in the Social & Influencer lions this year.

If you're interested in learning more about The Drum's 50 Under 30, contact Olivia Denman via olivia.denman@thedrum.com.