Poem managing director announces departure
Poem’s managing director Katie Raleigh has announced her departure after over seven years with the agency.
Taking to Linkedin on Friday, she said the time had come to “step away and try something new”.
“It’s been one heck of a ride – and if I knew back then what I know now, I wouldn’t change a thing,” she wrote.
Katie Raleigh
“I wasn’t convinced I was going to join Poem when Matt Holmes first called about a GAD role, but a few chats later, I was all in – and that’s down to the Poets, past and present. There’s truly no other agency like it: the culture, the creative smarts, the Slack chaos, the lols and mems, I’ll miss it all.”
Raleigh joined Poem in 2018 after a freelance stint with Samsung Electronics as a senior PR manager. Prior to that, she held various roles at One Green Bean and Bang Public Relations.
In 2022, she stepped into a newly created managing director role, alongside Rhania Farah who took on the title of general manager. Their appointments marked the agency’s first major restructure since being founded in 2015.
“When I joined, there were ten of us pitching like mad, trying to prove that earned ideas were the future. Fast forward to now: Poem has a content creation arm, a killer social and earned skillset, and one of the best creative PR teams in the country (subjectively speaking I guess!” Raleigh wrote on Linkedin.
Her role will be absorbed by Poem’s leadership team, including Farah and co-founder Rob Lowe.
Lowe also wrote about the news on Linkedin, adding: “It’s a privilege to keep anyone for that long, but especially someone that’s been so integral to the shaping and evolution of what we are.
“I can’t promise this for every Poet that leaves (and hopefully it won’t become a habit), but we’ve written a poem for Katie…because she’ll always be a Poet (I only wish it were a limerick). Thank you Katie, on behalf of me and all the past and present Poets!”
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Lauren McNamara is a freelance journalist contributing to Mumbrella. She previously spent three years at the publication, most recently as the associate editor. She first joined in 2022 after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left her staff role at Mumbrella in August 2025.
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