'I endured the spiral dive with my boss – the plane engine failed twice and I respected her more'

Teiffyon Parry is chief strategy officer at independent adtech giant Equativ, which has over 550 staff in 16 offices across 12 countries. Parry first joined Equativ as executive vice president of global demand in 2021 and has since used his insight to steer development of Equativ’s media buying tools.

I'll admit to being pretty terrified when I was invited into a propeller plane by my boss, Julia Bowen, who was teaching herself aerobatics over the Blue Mountains in Sydney.

I joined Julia's team at Cable & Wireless Optus as an analyst in 2000. She was general director of programmes, and I became her chief of staff almost immediately.

She is an immensely impressive person. She had a military background and was also one of the first female rugby union referees in the world. It’s fair to say that Julia liked new challenges and she always encouraged her team not to be fearful of what they hadn't done before and to be brave in everything they did.

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Up in the skies, Julia talked me through all the tasks she was going to do before and during her manoeuvres. We were soon climbing and climbing until the engine cut out, the plane fell with the nose tipped down and it began spinning round. But Julia’s softly-spoken communication was very reassuring and I knew she was in control every step of the way.

As we spiralled and looped it was very peaceful. Julia talked herself through the restart mechanisms. The propeller ticked over but cut out and so we went back into the spin and through the same steps. The engine then failed to kick back a second time before starting at the third time of asking.

I was still relatively calm given we had gone through two false engine starts. It was only when we landed that Julia told me we had dropped below the altitude for a safe return. Had the engine not started a third time that may have been it, she said.

Yet, the whole experience made me respect her even more with her cool, calm and collected nature under pressure.

Back on the ground, she was always focused in what she did, always with a smile and strong nature.

She was exceptional at aligning people around a strategic vision, too. She would approach the programmes she oversaw from the broader business perspective, not the programme perspective.

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Julia would seek out definitions of success that were aligned with the key stakeholders which would measure the programme. She would forge a creative cohesive view on what needed to be delivered and break them down into a series of work streams, rather than taking a bottoms up, product approach. That was insightful and influenced me a great deal through my career.

She understood the strengths and weaknesses of her peers but her most impressive trait was being able to delegate comfortably, and build on this through empowering the people below her.

Julia believed in meritocracy and there was always strong, open communication in the team. I never felt she needed to be the most dominant in the room. Nobody felt superior to the other and she fostered a ‘we’re in this together’ spirit. If we failed, we failed fast and moved on.

She adhered to the Japanese mantra of ‘genchi genbutsu’ which meant 'going to the problem'. She urged us not to hear issues second hand or to understand something without seeing it for ourselves. She would always want to decorate stats with the colour behind a business rationale, purpose or the client needs.

I learned all this in a year's secondment at Cable & Wireless before returning to the UK to work for Accenture. Fast forward to September 2023, I was made CSO at Equativ, where we offer a global marketplace for programmatic advertising.

We help the largest brands and agencies on the buy side, with the largest digital broadcasters, publishers or app owners in the world to manage ad inventory and ultimately help advertisers to maximise their investment in media.

Where we are leading the market is innovating in the emerging high-impact channels like connected TV (CTV), retail media and gaming and bringing buyers and sellers as close together as possible. We do that in a very direct and transparent and equitable model, which is driving the growth of Equativ.

The fight for eyeballs has become increasingly competitive in today’s marketplace. There has been a much more concerted effort in the last 18 months to remember that the client and consumer are at the heart of what we do.

It’s getting back to nuanced support in how we value that moment in time where someone is on a media site and making the most of it in a way that isn't intrusive to the consumer and one that’s valuable to the advertiser. That seems to have had a renaissance after the years of focusing on scale at all costs.

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If a publisher holds true to their core DNA – a consumer coming back to their media on a regular basis – if they retain that focus, they will find there are more platforms of choice, which companies like Equativ can help them access to monetise their audience in the right way. One bringing relevant ads, not leaking data or impacting user experience.

It was simply being exposed at an early age to the different levels of management on large projects, coupled with Julia’s strength of team building and leadership, that helped me move forward in my career and to where I am today.

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