Rowan Manning named new CEO of scarlettabbott

Consultancy scarlettabbott has appointed Rowan Manning as its new CEO. She steps into the shoes of Jeremy Petty, who takes on a new role in the firm.

Founded in 1991, scarlettabbott is a full service employee engagement consultancy. With offices in York and London, its team partners with some of the world’s biggest brands, including Sony Interactive Entertainment, Chivas Brothers, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and EY. scarlettabbott offers those clients expertise across a number of disciplines including access to creative, content specialists, behavioural science and cultural anthropology.

Before joining us in 2013, Jeremy Petty worked for more than 15 years in internal communications and employee engagement. For almost two years, he has fulfilled the role of CEO at the firm. As he now prepares to become chief client officer with a remit to boost client growth, his legacy from that spell was something which Euan Jarvie, non-executive chair at scarlettabbott, was keen to praise.

Jarvie noted, “We must take this opportunity to recognise the leadership and effort that Jeremy has brought to his time as CEO of the business, this new role will allow him to return to focusing 100% of his time on better servicing our clients, whilst building a scalable growth engine at the heart of scarlettabbott.”

Looking ahead, the firm will be helmed by new CEO Rowan Manning. She joins York-based scarlettabbott with over 25 years of experience leading and transforming large scale media, digital and creative businesses.

Jarvie added, “Rowan is a passionate and empathetic leader with a highly commercial mind and an outstanding track record. We couldn’t be more pleased to have attracted someone of her calibre to lead scarlettabbott at this pivotal point in our growth journey.”

Manning joins the York-headquartered business from her previous role as president of dentsu Creative. A qualified Psychologist, she is widely recognised for using her human-centric leadership style to drive high performance teams.

“I could not be more thrilled to be leading the incredible talent at scarlettabbott,” Manning said of her new challenge. “For me, stepping into this role is not just a professional milestone, it’s a unique opportunity, and a personal commitment to drive market-leading innovation and excellence in an area I’ve always been passionate about. Together we are on a mission to build better worlds of work, in which both individuals and organisations can truly thrive, and make a lasting impact on the workplaces of tomorrow.”

The news comes at a time of heightened demand for improved employee engagement to help retain staff – and when a slow economy means firms are under pressure to make the right hiring choices at the first time of asking. To that end, many are looking for support with behavioural science to weigh up which prospective employees are the best fit for their organisation. Amid this, scarlettabbott attracted investment from private equity firm LDC in December 2022.