Amar Urhekar joins Ashfield Health as global president

Former McCann Health veteran Amar Urhekar has joined Ashfield Health network as global president.

Following a healthcare communications career spanning over two decades of leadership in five countries, Amar Urhekar takes the helm as global president of the more than 1,450-strong network that has rebranded from Ashfield Healthcare Communications to Ashfield Health.

Since joining, Urhekar has already put a new strategy in place, which aims to see Ashfield Health emerge from the pandemic as a new agile, dynamic network – data and technology driven, creative, and diverse.

Amar Urhekar

With experience spanning over two decades and multiple global markets, Ashfield said Urhekar is a recognised industry thought-leader in healthcare communications, marketing, and advertising.

He has advised leading pharma and public health companies with navigating complex healthcare markets, crafting innovative marketing campaigns, and meaningfully communicating brand value to key stakeholders.

Under Amar’s leadership, Ashfield Health is under-going a series of transformational changes. Central to this has been a merging of some of the network’s standout acquisitions from the past 10 years to form two new agencies - Mind+Matter, a new 250-strong global creative communications agency and Ashfield MedComms, which brings together over 700 creatives, scientists, strategists, and client partners to form one of the world’s largest medical communications agencies.

Urhekar said: “Ashfield Health is now designed to respond better and quicker to the new challenges our clients face. We encourage independence and entrepreneurialism in our specialist agency teams but also have the unique ability to work as one team when needed. By unifying around our common purpose of make it matter, we have stronger connections that enable us to scale rapidly and provide our clients with tailored expert teams. We can truly deliver life-changing work that matters."

The new strategy has seen several new positions created to support capability development, growth and innovation – an example of this is the appointment of former Business Unit Head with responsibility for Ashfield Digital and Creative and Pegasus, Simon Hackett, into the role of Global Growth Director, Ashfield Health.