Former Havas Media exec Michaela Aguilar joins Helium as head of growth marketing

Michaela Aguilar has joined martech consultancy Helium as head of growth marketing.

Aguilar spent years at Havas Media in various roles, including head of solutions and head of customer experience and analytics. She joined martech company Acoustic as head of business partnership ecosystem in 2022, and became senior manager of services across Asia-Pacific and Japan at the company in 2023.

Throughout her career, she also designed and wrote the Martech Certificate for the Australian Digital Marketing Association (ADMA), and has contributed to postgraduate education at RMIT.

In her new role at Helium, she will be charged with accelerating the company’s consulting practice — aiming to help businesses achieve data-driven personalisation at scale.

She said personalisation remains a challenge for businesses, despite heavy investments in martech.

“Beyond the high cost and lengthy implementation of technology, the operational model is often an afterthought. Helium is uniquely positioned to connect the dots between tech implementation and a proven operational model, enabling businesses to scale personalisation quickly. And we have the numbers to prove it,” she said in a release.

Puneet Srivastava, chief data officer and co-founder at Helium, pointed to the complexity of the industry and the challenges Aguilar will have to overcome.

“Personalisation is a multi-faceted enterprise-wide transformation program, and technology is probably the easiest component of it,” Srivastava said.

“Most companies confuse modernisation with transformation. While it is driven by the organisation’s vision, but setting up a successful program includes education, alignment, planning, execution, standardisation, operationalisation, empowerment, change management and innovation, across multiple teams. Michaela will work with businesses and the industry to get these points across.”

Harold Janson, chief personalisation officer and co-founder at Helium, said he was looking forward to working with his friend and colleague.

“Michaela and I go way back. I’m looking forward to not only working with a seasoned expert but also someone who’s become a good friend over the years. We’re going to have lots of fun building business and growing Helium’s consulting practice.”