Our People

Shane Russell is Chief Executive Officer of Havas Red Australia, one of the country’s most awarded PR, Social and Experiential agencies.

In a 20-year career that has spanned both Australia and the United States, Shane has built a reputation for leading high-growth teams and brands that aren’t afraid of taking creative risks.

For a decade prior to joining Red in April 2023, Shane served as Executive Vice President at New York-based 5W Public Relations, helping it become one of the largest independent firms in America. As an agency leader Shane was instrumental in driving the company’s record multi-year expansion, helping win and retain household-name brands and disruptive startups, manage group operations, and provide senior counsel and strategic direction to clients across a diversity of consumer and B2B verticals.

Prior to 5W, Shane was head of global PR at Shutterstock, where he managed external agency relationships and helped craft the company’s product and international communications program.

At Red, Shane is focused on elevating the agency’s merged media offerings and leveraging his deep operational expertise to support clients as they navigate various growth stages, brand and campaign launches, corporate and financial milestones, issues and more.

Shane launched his career in his homeland of Australia in 2004, representing some of the country’s largest real estate groups and operating his own generalist PR consultancy before relocating to New York in 2012. Shane holds a Bachelor of Journalism and Communication from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

Outside of work, Shane dedicates much of his waking and sleeping hours to his 2 young daughters and travel.

Laura is a Managing Partner of the Consumer and Brand team at Havas Red. With over 16 years in the industry, Laura has extensive expertise in implementing strategic PR, social media, and marketing campaigns.

Having worked across brand, travel, food and beverage and lifestyle accounts including Dubai Economy And Tourism, FIJI Water, Snapchat, Samsung, Scoot Airlines, Destination NSW, Tourism Australia, working on the Restaurant Australia campaign, Crown Resorts, Lion, Margaret River Gourmet Escape, Four Pillars, Langham Hospitality Group, Accolade Wines, Warwick Hotels and Resorts, Barilla, KFC, Carlton United Breweries, Connoisseur Ice Cream Peters Ice Cream, Singapore Airlines, McDonald’s, booking.com, Tourism NT, Kellogg, The Royal Commission for AlUla(RCU), Virgin Voyages, United Airlines, Unilever and Merlin Entertainment Group.

Laura has a solid understanding of global strategic consultancy and development of integrated campaigns for multi-market implementation. With unsurpassable contacts and strong relationships within the travel, beverage, hospitality, food, news and lifestyle media space, Laura loves working to develop and execute all aspects of public outreach campaigns to increase media exposure, support strategic marketing initiatives and brand development.

Nic is managing partner of HAVAS Red’s Health & Wellness practice with over 25 years’ experience in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medical technology, biotechnology, corporate communications and crisis and issues management.

As a communications, reputation and engagement advisor specialising in healthcare and specialist medical services, in consulting and in-house roles, her experience includes corporate communications, marketing and public relations. Nic has a proven ability to connect stakeholders to support an organisation’s business goals. Her experience covers: corporate communications, media relations, messaging, issues and crisis management, investor relations, internal and external communication, and reputation brand management. Her passion for advocacy has been the cornerstone of her healthcare communications approach.

Nic leads the teams work for patient advocacy organisations, healthcare professional organisations, private and public health services as well as many pharmaceutical clients developing clients’ communications strategy, narratives and tailored messaging for ongoing needs, crisis and issues scenarios to deliver effective programs that achieve results.

Nic led the global public affairs and marketing team for a specialist global fertility services organisation for 16 years, until mid-2020, responsible for corporate and brand reputation strategy, aligning marketing, communications and business development performance across the organisation’s operations in Australia, Europe and Singapore. Using the power of storytelling she built the organisation’s brand profile and thought leadership position by empowering and amplifying the profiles of the CEO, Medical Director and other ELT members. A consumer driven communications strategy complemented by a referral engagement network was responsible for transforming IVF from a research based medical/scientific treatment rarely talked about publicly, to normalising the need for fertility care in the broader community through patient advocacy and bipartisan government support.​​

Kate is the Managing Partner of Havas Blvd, a Brand Experience agency which is made up of over 22 communications and production specialists, including Photographers, Designers, Video Producers, Event Managers, Digital services as well as traditional PR account service and speciality writers. She is additionally tasked with the role of Chief Client Officer at Havas Red.

With over 15 years’ experience in the industry, starting in Experiential Marketing before moving to PR and Events, Kate joined Red Agency in early 2017 when her previous agency merged with Red.

Kate is skilled in management, team leadership, financial management, business development, strategic planning and risk mitigation. Kate is results-driven, commercially astute and champions the agency’s diverse culture

Kate has a history in building and leading communications, PR, and marketing teams and organisations.  Combining creativity, storytelling and technology to bring campaigns to life and create meaningful experiences for consumers.

Kate is also a board director of the Australian institute of Motor Sport Safety (AIMSS), with a specific brief to provide PR and communications expertise.  AIMSS is a not-for-profit organisation, established by Motorsport Australia as the peak body for motor sport safety and related research. It is directly linked to a global initiative to reduce road trauma.

Kate has created campaigns for leading brands including, Toyota, Lexus, Veritas, Symantec, Hino and the FCAI.

Haylie Marchant is an award-winning senior PR professional and business leader with a proven track record of building and running successful PR agencies both in Australia and abroad.

A deep strategic thinker, she is passionate about doing ‘work that works’ and using PR to drive genuine brand impact.

With more than 15 years’ experience, she joined Havas Red and the agency’s national leadership in May 2021 and is overseeing the growth of the team and business in the Brisbane market.

During her career she has worked with some of Australia’s (and the globe’s) leading brands including Google, YouTube, eBay, Westfield, Subway, Capilano, and Sanofi Consumer Healthcare to name a few. She has also provided strategic counsel and issues management advice to major brands in the retail, property, FMCG, and aged care sectors among others.

Haylie is also the founder of The PR Toolkit, an online educational platform and DIY toolkit empowering small businesses to do their own PR.

Passionate about education and talent development, she has also taught public relations at the Queensland University of Technology and participated in panels and guest lecture opportunities.

Sue Cook is strategic advisor within HAVAS Red’s leadership team and the Health and Wellness practice. Prior, Sue led the Health and Wellness practice at HAVAS Red for more than five years. At HAVAS Red she has overseen the development of the integrated communications offering for our health sector clients.​ She leads on strategy for corporate communications, issues management, stakeholder relationships, patient advocacy, brand launches and disease awareness on behalf of global pharmaceutical and consumer health clients.  Her issues and crisis management experience at HAVAS Red includes counsel for communications and stakeholder strategies for product recall management and sensitive corporate reputational issues.​

With a background in journalism and a focus on healthcare communications for around 30 years, Sue has been a leader in communications in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, consumer health, medical technology, biotechnology and corporate communications. Sue has held various leadership roles in healthcare communications at local and global communications agencies, including managing director roles at a leading global agency in both the UK and Australia, as well as APAC Director for Health leading on award winning health work.​

Sue served on the organising committee for the Australian PRIME Awards and served as a judge for the Awards in 2022, 2023 and again in 2024.

A strategic communication leader with over 20 years in the public relations industry, Myrna has worked extensively across the Global, APAC and Australian communications landscape. She has held multiple and diverse leadership roles in the communications industry, bringing valuable perspective and insight to multi-stakeholder organisations, helping them navigate their voice and reputation in increasingly complex environments.

She is recognised for leading high performing agency and in house teams in the fast-changing sphere of technology innovation and corporate comms.

Underpinned by a focus on driving business impact, Myrna covers a span of strategic communications expertise across the innovation, corporate, health, auto and consumer sectors, providing leadership counsel, communications strategy nd planning, brand storytelling, crisis and issues management, narrative, and messaging programs as well as employee comms. She is also passionate about bringing heart to the vital area of diversity and inclusion comms.

Well versed in the discipline of creating pathways for brands to engage meaningfully with their audience, her communications experience includes some of the world’s leading innovation brands; Philips Global, Apple, Telstra, Optus, TomTom, Fujitsu, Microsoft, Canon, LG, Bose, Motorola, Dimension Data amongst many others.

Stuart has extensive experience across sectors and continents including, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK where he has spent the last 16 years of his career fine tuning his strategic skills in helping brands develop their content, digital and social offering to drive growth and become better storytellers.

With a career that spans working both client and agency side across travel, education, FMCG, tech, transport, health and QSR on brands such as Celebrity Cruises, Etihad, Emirates, Booking.com, McDonald’s, Shell and NIVEA.

With over 40 years in the industry, Patrick has extensive experience in public relations, marketing and journalism.

A media relations specialist and an accomplished writer, he develops, integrates and implements a broad range of corporate communication strategies designed to support the growth of client brand reputation and market position.

His mobility roles have included general manager of PR for Hyundai, Chrysler, Jeep, Audi, and senior agency responsibilities for Toyota Motor Corporation.

For many years, Patrick reported federal and state politics and was central to the delivery of projects for prominent entities such as Visy Industries, Colliers Jardine, Business SA and the United Nations Environment Program.

His research, analytic and writing skills have contributed to the attainment of post-graduate qualifications in management and in teaching English to speakers of other languages.