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Tom Doctoroff is currently the Chief Cultural Insights Director at Prophet, the global brand and marketing consultancy. Between 2012 and 2016, Tom was the CEO of J. Walter Thompson Asia Pacific, one of the region’s fast growing and most profitable marketing and communications companies. He is also one of Asia’s most respected advertising professionals. His unique combination of pan-Asian work, plus almost two decades based in China, has made him an expert in the cross-border management of brand architecture and brand building, as well as a leading expert in Chinese consumer psychology.

Doctoroff is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Marketing at University Chicago Booth School of Business and an Adjunct Professor of Advertising at New York-based Baruch College.

Doctoroff started his career at Leo Burnett in Chicago before moving to JWT in 1992. In 1994, he moved to Hong Kong as Regional Business Director for clients such as Pepsi, Kraft and Citibank. In 1998, he landed in China as the Managing Director of JWT Shanghai and in 2002, was appointed Northeast Asia Area Director and Greater China CEO. In 2012, he was appointed the CEO of Asia Pacific for JWT, a position he held until returning to the United States in late 2016. Through diversification into digital platform design, digital content production, trade marketing and field marketing, JWT Asia Pacific emerged as one the most synergistically integrated, creatively dynamic communications networks.

The author of three best-selling books – Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer (2006), What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and China’s Modern Consumer (2012) and Twitter is Not a Strategy: Remastering the Art of Brand Engagement (2014) – Doctoroff is also a frequent commentator on CNBC, NBC, Bloomberg, and National Public Radio, as well as in the Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

During his 22 years based in Asia, Doctoroff has managed the strategy and marketing communications for a uniquely broad base of corporations, both multinational and Asian. A few of his client partners include:

Doctoroff is also a Vice President of Strategy for the global International Advertising Association and on the Board of Directors for BUILD NYC, a non-profit organization dedicated to leveraging entrepreneurship to keep under-resourced students in high school. He is a Board of Directors member for the New York-based International Center of Photography (ICP).

An alum of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Doctoroff earned his MBA an MBA with concentrations in marketing and finance in 1989. He holds a BA in psychology from Northwestern University.