IAG’s Zara Curtis joins Mamamia as Mia Freedman officially moves to chief creative role
IAG’s head of customer experience, brand and social impact, Zara Curtis, has announced a move to women’s media company Mamamia, as co-founder Mia Freedman officially steps into the chief creative officer role.
In her new role of chief content officer at the publisher, Curtis will set the strategic content direction for Mamamia’s audience growth, and lead the company’s content team, including the recently-promoted head of content, Eliza Sorman-Nilsson, head of audience development Jocelin Abbey, podcast content director Jessie-Lee Klass, and creative director Harrie Jack.
She joins with over 20 years experience across content, creative and marketing, including six-and-a-half years at IAG.
Curtis joined the insurance group in 2018 as director of content, and slowly added to her remit. That same year, she took on digital media, before moving into a content and customer engagement role in 2019. In 2022, she was acting chief marketer for IAG, following Brent Smart’s departure. Curtis then moved into the head of customer experience, brand and social impact role late last year.
“I’ve always been truly inspired by Mamamia’s purpose ‘to make the world a better place for women & girls’ and I am a passionate believer in the role of independent publishing to authentically deliver on such an important mission,” Curtis explained.
Zara Curtis and Mia Freedman
“Today Mamamia has earned the trust of 7 million Australian women’s ears and eyeballs and is the number one podcast network for women in the world, so for me, I’m fired up and thrilled to be joining Mamamia as chief content officer to really focus on growing audiences across every platform and deepen every single engagement as I lead some of the most talented journalists, producers, and storytellers in the country.
“With Nat Harvey at the helm and a leadership dream team, I am honoured to be joining. I’ll bring my creativity, passion, and deep strategic content and audience expertise to this already incredible team working alongside founder, friend, and fearless chief creative officer Mia Freedman to push the boundaries and over deliver on our collective ambitions for Mamamia as we continue to advocate, represent, and engage Australian women today and into the future,” Curtis continued.
Mamamia’s recently-appointed CEO, Natalie Harvey, said: “We have an incredible content team who are at the leading edge of culture, creating hours of content on site, podcasts, and social every day.
“The recent promotions of Eliza Sorman-Nilsson & Valentina Todoroska (promoted into editor in chief) and new roles including Jocelin Abbey joining to drive audience growth will add considerable fuel to our brilliant team. There is so much opportunity for a modern media business like Mamamia and Zara’s diverse experience will be a huge asset for our team as we accelerate into the future, building on the incredible engagement & enormous scale we already have.
“Zara will work closely with co-founder, Mia Freedman who is moving officially into the chief creative officer role and will continue to work closely with the team as well as hosting No Filter and co-hosting Mamamia Out Loud.”
Now taking on the the head creative position, Freedman said she “couldn’t be more excited to be working alongside someone [she] admire[s] and trust[s] so much”.
The media company is also set to welcome former Carat Australia chief strategist, Danni Wright, as its new head of strategy next week, where she will lead all strategic output.
Wright was among a number of recent departures at dentsu’s Carat, alongside head of growth Scott McCaffery and group strategy and planning director Paul Baker.
However, Mamamia’s head of podcasts, Elissa Ratliff, recently announced her departure, explaining that she will not return post-parental leave.
Ratliff joined in 2012 as an intern, before moving into a role as a site producer after a year. She worked her way up to managing producer, podcasts by 2019. Ratliff had a short stint working at Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines and ABC, before returning to the female media company in mid-2020 as head of podcasts.
Curtis will begin at Mamamia in September.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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