Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, d expósito & Partners
Daisy Expósito-Ulla, an established name in multicultural communications in America, is Chairman/CEO of d expósito & Partners, LLC, an independent, woman- and minority-owned, full service marketing and communications agency. Positioned as The New American Agency™, its expertise helps brands leverage the compelling opportunity represented by U.S. Hispanics, an ever-growing population estimated at nearly 58.2 Million, leading key markets in key categories and forever changing the face of America. d expósito & Partners offers “excellence in marketing while creatively leveraging and infusing cultural insights for total market solutions” in today’s new pluricultural demographic context.
As a visionary partner to American corporations, she has achieved a transformational career on an unprecedented scale in successful cross-cultural brand-building through advertising and marketing communications proven to engage new, untapped markets and move new consumers to embrace Fortune 500 brands. She has pioneered brands in the U.S. Hispanic Market, such as AT&T, Bank of America, McDonald’s, KRAFT Foods, Sears, and Mazola Corn Oil. Among her agency clients today: AARP, which has allowed the agency to develop a uniquely specialized practice for the Latino 50+ segment; ConAgra Foods (Chef Boyardee, Hunt’s, PAM, among others); McDonald’s Tri-State region; while also partnering with other agencies to provide service to clients on several specific disciplines such as media, as is the case with the U.S. Army.
Starting at barely twentysomething, hers is a journey that journalists have described as “a story that could only happen in America.” Her beginnings hark back to content creation for public and private television to soon move to creative and production work at pioneering Hispanic agency Conill Advertising in New York (now part of Saatchi & Saatchi.) However, it was as a result of the meteoric growth of the ad agency she helped create, The Bravo Group (a Young & Rubicam/WPP Company), that she captured the attention of industry observers and became a household name. From the modellic Hispanic ad agency that The Bravo Group became, Expósito-Ulla helped create and formalize the blueprint for multicultural entities thus becoming the umbrella for other agencies, helming and advancing it from a one-million dollar company to reach billings of nearly half-a-billion.
“Daisy’s is probably the most important Madison Avenue success story written by a young woman that was not born in the United States,” said Ambassador Ed Ney, Chairman Y&R, introducing her at The International Center of New York awards ceremony, a recognition bestowed on non-native Americans that she shares with Nobel-laureate Elie Wiesel and Henry Kissinger.
Business wise, her conviction of vision has made her a pivot of growth for corporations intent on seizing the Hispanic market opportunity, allowing for budgets to increase exponentially and helping quickly change the radio and television Spanish landscape from scattered stations to the mega-billion industry that it is today, boasting some of the largest broadcast networks and influencing millions of people.
In 2010, d expósito & Partners was tapped by the U.S. Census whose results that year (the second time Daisy has been tapped by the U.S. Census) served to confirm what she had been saying as a trusted voice of diversity in America. Today, celebrating its 10th year, d expósito & Partners has been chosen as Agency of the Year 2015 by the Advertising Educational Foundation, (AEF). The agency is led by Daisy and a combined team of pioneering leaders and next-generation talent who are committed to helping clients navigate the complex waters of a diverse nation and together pioneer the future.
Daisy has served on various industry association boards of directors, such as the AdCouncil. She was a founding member, President and today a board member of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, (AHAA). She also currently serves on the board of directors of the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies) and Advertising Educational Foundation (AEF). She was a founding member of The New America Alliance, served on its board and has been a 100K Club member of that organization for the last ten years. She was the founding chair of the Latino initiatives and a board member for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, working in connection with the White House. She is a board member for The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families. Appointed by former Mayor Bloomberg, she served as a City Commissioner on New York’s Arts and Entertainment Commission, where she was instrumental in bringing The Latin Grammy Awards Ceremony to New York City. A supporter of the arts, she and her husband are members of the board of directors of Teatro Repertorio Español.
Daisy Expósito-Ulla came to the United States as a political refugee from Cuba with her family in 1964. Daisy and her husband and business partner, Jorge Ulla, a writer and award-winning filmmaker and Grammy-nominated producer, live and work in New York City. Their son, Gabriel, an NYU honors-graduate pursuing post-graduate studies at Columbia University, is a curator at Rene Redzepi’s MAD Foundation in Denmark, and a contributor to Lucky Peach, Bon Appétit, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur and The New Yorker, among other publications.
Advertising Awards: Numerous Clio, Effie, Addy, Telly, NY Festival of Festivals awards, 2013 Ogilvy Silver Award (within the Multicultural Category for ConAgra Foods), and in 2015 the AEF (Advertising Educational Foundation) Agency of the Year Award. In September 2016, Expósito-Ulla received the ADCOLOR Lifetime Achievement Award in Boca Raton, FL.
