NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Leading healthcare marketing agency, Heartbeat, has announced a significant transformation in executive leadership. Agency founder, Bill Drummy, has stepped down as CEO after 18 years running the perennially successful agency. Mr. Drummy has assumed the new role of Chairman and will remain a key part of the agency, guiding thought leadership and business growth.

As Chairman, Mr. Drummy will focus on developing new client relationships, counseling long-standing Heartbeat clients on business innovation, and providing provocative, culture-shifting insight into the healthcare industry as a whole.

Longtime Heartbeat partners, Nadine Leonard and James Talerico, now lead Heartbeat’s business strategy and operations. In addition to advancing the agency’s standing as industry-leading AOR and continuing its award-winning legacy of marketing innovation, Leonard and Talerico will continue to maintain oversight of, respectively, Heartbeat’s Strategy and Creative departments. Leonard will be taking the role of Managing Director, Executive Planning Director, while Talerico will be serving as Managing Director, Executive Creative Director.

“After starting Heartbeat in my spare bedroom in 1998 and building it into a 200-person agency and industry leader today, I’m enormously proud of our success,” reflected Mr. Drummy. “But I am most proud of our culture and the quality leadership we’ve been able to attract and foster. James and Nadine are exemplars of the prodigious talent who thrive at Heartbeat. They are charismatic leaders and inventive marketers and I’m very excited about the vision they’ve formulated for Heartbeat’s future health and growth.”

All other Heartbeat Executive Management team members continue on as essential parts of the company’s leadership structure, including Linda Bennett, a three-year Heartbeat veteran, Claudia Riegelhaupt and Lee Slovitt, both of whom celebrated their ten-year anniversaries with the agency, Janelle Starr, a twelve-year Heartbeat standout, and Jennifer Campanaro, who celebrated an incredible 15 years with the agency.

About Heartbeat

Founded in 1998, Heartbeat is the digitally native, full service, Consumer & HCP AOR leader with a unique focus on Challenger Brands. Challengers are brands that are breaking new ground or entering highly competitive environments and thus need a decidedly different approach to breakthrough and have market impact. We help brands overcome the odds and exceed their business goals by outsmarting, outworking, and outperforming the competition.