Talent watch: Snap hires VP for Europe as Allwyn restructures

This week’s people moves include Snap, Allwyn, Catena Media, and Dentsu.

Snap has appointment Grégory Gazagne as its new vice president of Europe, effective from 1 January, 2027.

The role will include leading the new European operation, and bringing the advertising businesses together across the UK, France, Germany, the Nordics, and the Netherlands.

Gazagne is currently president and managing director of the French Snapchat division. He has also held positions at Yahoo and Criteo, where he helped the latter business to scale to $2.4bn in revenue.

He said: ““I’m delighted to be taking on this role at such an exciting time for Snap. Having spent the past four years building our business in France, I’m looking forward to bringing that experience to a broader European remit.

“The region has significant opportunities for Snap, and I’m excited to work with our talented teams and partners across Europe and the UK to continue growing our advertising business.”

Snap is continuing its investment in European leadership, looking to grow its ad business and support its regional partners. The announcement of Gazagne comes a day after the social media platform published its Q3 earnings, which showed the company had seen a 14% year-on-year growth.

Allwyn restructures executive team

In preparation for its National Lottery transformation, Allwyn UK has made numerous changes to its leadership team.

This includes creating a new director of social impact role, which will be filled by current chief impact officer Alastair Ruxton. This will look to focus on communicating the National Lottery’s positive community impact.

Allwyn has also created a new chief marketing officer role that will bring together brand, marketing, CRM, creative, communications, product marketing, winners’ services and customer experience. The firm has hired Stephen Taylor to take on this role on an interim basis, starting 17 November, 2026.

Taylor, has more than 30 years experience in marketing having worked at PayPal, Samsung, Nokia and Pizza Express. He joins from CMO Thrive, the strategic marketing advisory business he founded.

A new chief digital officer role has also been created to take on responsibility for digital products and channels, customer experience, technology, data and platforms, automation and AI, alongside accountability for the commercial performance of Allwyn’s digital channels – but no announcement on who will be taking this role on.

Three executives will leave the business: ‍Richard Dawkins, managing director of digital; Sarah Venning, chief strategy and transformation officer; and Mark Smith, chief technology officer.

The new senior team structure, which comes into effect 1 December 2026, aims to push growth, as well as increase returns for Good Causes and improve player experience.

Phil Walker, chief executive at Allwyn, said: “The transformation of The National Lottery has involved an enormous amount of work across our business. Our challenge now is to turn that transformation into stronger growth, a better experience for players and retail partners, and more money for Good Causes.

“Changes of this scale inevitably affect people who have played important roles in getting us to where we are today. This next stage builds on what they have helped us achieve, and I want to thank them personally for the contribution they and their teams have made to The National Lottery.”

Other notable people moves

Catena Media: New senior VP of tech joins

Stefan Grech has been appointed as Catena Media’s new senior vice president of technology.

Grech joined the company in 2020, and most recently held the position of director of technical operations, overseeing platform engineering and tech infrastructure.

In his new role, Grech will be responsible for Catena’s tech and engineering strategy, and for driving AI adoption through the business.

Manuel Stan, chief executive at Catena Media, said: “Stefan knows how we work, has strong relationships across the business and brings the institutional knowledge we need. As we embed AI and automation across Catena, he is the right person to lead our technology team. His appointment also reflects the value we attach to building leadership from within.”

Dentsu X: new group director

Emma Stubbings has joined Dentsu X as group director of growth.

She was previously at Razorfish Health, as well as Initiative.

Zenith: Matthew Ridsdale as group business director

Matthew Ridsdale has joined Zenith as its new group business director on the Mars team.

He joins following a five-and-a-half year stint at WPP’s EssenceMediacom as client partner.

Nest Commerce: Adam Bly as chief growth officer

Adam Bly is Nest Commerce’s new chief growth officer. He joins the company from a similar role at MediaVision, and after almost nine years at Impression, finishing his stint as head of growth.

Netflix: Darshan Kantak joins as VP

Netflix has welcomed Darshan Kantak as vice president of its ad platform.

Kantak said: “What drew me to Netflix is the chance to use that technology to build impactful solutions. […These include] ads that feel relevant and welcome for members, and technical tools that make advertising even more innovative and effective. I look forward to building that with the team.”

MSQ: Matt Miller joins as group technology director

Matt Miller has joined MSQ after 14 years at dentsu.

He will take up the role of group technology director, and brings extensive experience in aligning and delivering modernisation, automation, and data transformation.

Google: Carl McLean joins data team

Carl McLean has taken up a position of head of data, measurement, and analytics at Google.

He wrote on LinkedIn: “I get to work with such an amazing team of data scientists focused on helping some of Australia’s largest advertisers build measurement infrastructure with strong data foundations, drive incrementality and media effectiveness and leverage measurement as a growth driver.”