Mark Penn

Mark J. Penn is the Chairman and CEO of Stagwell Inc., a Nasdaq-listed company with over 13,000 employees and over $2 billion of annual revenue. Born January 15, 1954, Penn has spent 40 years in market research, advertising, public relations, polling, and consulting. He earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and attended Columbia Law School.

Penn founded Penn and Schoen with his Harvard roommate Doug Schoen at the offices of the Harvard Crimson. As co-founder and CEO of Penn Schoen Berland, a market research firm he built and sold to WPP, he built up a company from a start-up with two people into a high-tech market-research powerhouse. He is credited with developing several unique ad and polling methods used by presidents and major corporations and was first to implement overnight polling. In 2006, Penn was named Worldwide CEO of Burson Marsteller, a global public relations and public affairs firm with a presence in nearly 80 markets around the world, where he tripled profits while winning the Holmes Report North American Agency of the Year award in 2011.

Prior to founding Stagwell, Penn served in senior executive positions at Microsoft; as Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, he served on the company's 12-member Senior Leadership Team managing a $2 billion advertising budget and later overall strategy for the world's largest company. In 2021, Penn spearheaded the combination of digital services leader The Stagwell Group, and global creative network MDC Partners creating Stagwell Inc, a top 10 global marketing services firm.

Career History

• In the fall of 1976, while Penn was a first-year law student at Columbia University, he and Schoen became the pollsters for Congressman Ed Koch's second run for Mayor of New York City.
• Co-founder and CEO of Penn Schoen Berland (sold to WPP)
• CEO of Burson-Marsteller (2006–2012)
• Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft (2012–2015)
• Founder of The Stagwell Group (2015–2021) and CEO of Stagwell Inc. (2021–present)

Dubbed "The Master of the Message" by Time Magazine, Penn is the author of two best-selling marketing insights books, "Microtrends: The Small Forces Driving the Big Disruptions Today" and "Microtrends Squared: Small Forces Driving Today's Big Disruptions." He is a visiting lecturer at Harvard College, where he teaches courses on Public Opinion.

What Mark Penn could bring to Chairman and CEO at Stagwell:

Penn's combination of deep expertise in data-driven consumer insights, political campaign strategy, and C-suite technology management positions him uniquely to lead Stagwell through its transformation into an AI and data-focused marketing powerhouse. His track record of identifying microtrends and consumer behavior shifts—from discovering the "soccer mom" swing vote to pioneering overnight polling—translates directly to building more sophisticated consumer understanding capabilities. His experience restructuring major organizations (Burson-Marsteller's tripling of profits, Microsoft's strategic repositioning) demonstrates his ability to execute large-scale transformations, critical for an organization integrating creative and technology in an evolving industry landscape.