Oriel Davis-Lyons has joined Mother as chief creative officer of its New York office. Davis-Lyons joins from Spotify, where he has worked since 202o, becoming head of creative – podcast + talk early this year. Prior to Spotify he was a creative director at Droga5, also for two years, and has worked at R/GA in New York and Colenso BBDO and Special Group in New Zealand.

Davis-Lyons also founded The One School in 2020, a 16-week portfolio intensive for Black creatives, that he runs in partnership with The One Club for Creativity, and WFH-wear brand, Corpleisure.

“Oriel’s vision for our industry has a gravitational pull you can feel. He’s an entrepreneur at heart who has a proven record of harnessing creativity to change the world, and he’s the biggest believer in the next generation of talent,” stated Teri Miller, president and partner of Mother US.

“To me, Mother has always felt less like an ad agency and more like a place where creativity is the core product and great advertising is just one of the ways it shows up in the world,” Davis-Lyons added.

Joe Staples, chief creative officer and partner, Mother US, stated, “Every decision we’ve made this year is to build Mother into a creative company for the next generation. Oriel Davis-Lyons is the perfect leader for this next chapter at Mother.”

Davis-Lyons led Spotify’s awarded marketing campaign, Wrapped, and the brand campaign for Chobani that put its purpose on the map, helped to start mental health conversations for Seize The Awkward with GIPHY stickers and a music video and wrote the incisive campaign for Hilary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential election bid. View the work here.