Alona Elkayam, Chief Creative Officer and Founder: As chief creative officer, Alona steers 321's creative with particular emphasis on the cohesive application of business, human and cultural insights to branding and design strategy for the company's global clients
Starting out in one of the oldest advertising agencies in the U.S., Citigate Albert Frank, then eventually joining Ogilvy & Mather and Saatchi & Saatchi, Alona cut her teeth on "killer" accounts such as BusinessWeek, Wyeth Ayerst and Pfizer, to name a few, garnering attention at the age of 21 for her work with BusinessWeek.
In 1996, Alona got the entrepreneurial bug and opened her first company, Gimme 5 Productions,
which developed some of the very first websites for institutions such as New York Life and The Museum of Modern Art, among others. Two years later, she successfully sold her first company.
Over the next few years, Alona enjoyed the freedom of working as a freelance consultant, where she was involved in the launches of MSNBC.com and CoverGirl.com.
She was then tapped to join HotJobs.com as creative director, where she was responsible for developing HotJobs.com's brand. This included corporate identity, outdoor marketing, television,
online branding and marketing. HotJobs.com became the sixth most-recognized brand, contributing to the company's successful IPO in 1999 and its eventual sale to Yahoo! in 2000.
Alona subsequently held senior positions at SBIRazorfish and at Grey Healthcare Group, where she served as the co-lead creative on the worldwide Levitra® and BOTOX®Cosmetic product launches.
Alona now leads the way at 321 Takeoff, delivering global, creative solutions for some of the world's most distinguished brands, including LexisNexis, Lawyers.com, Sony and
Far From TImid. And her work isn't going unnoticed: she continues to stretch the bounds of branding and design strategy with her insights with her syndicated blog: Best and Worst Dressed Brands of the Week and now sits on the board of the New York Legal Assistance Group.
Alona is a devoted student of kung fu and an accomplished painter.
She received her BA from American University and continued her education at the School of Visual Arts. She is also fluent in Hebrew and French.
A Look Inside:
Alona was a small forward on her high school varsity team.
