“Build your tribe,” Melissa Wisehart from Omnicom Media

Meet Melissa Wisehart, Chief Client Solutions Officer, North America at Omnicom Media. With nearly 20 years of experience across data, technology, and media, Melissa brings a future-forward perspective to the industry. Data and performance-focused by trade, but a brand storyteller at heart, she is known for using data and technology to unlock new possibilities, challenge the status quo, and help creative work go further.

Melissa sat down with Jocelyn Hudak, Senior Director, Content and Digital Marketing and Morgan James, Content Marketing Specialist at SiriusXM Media for Pass the Mic. Together, they discussed curiosity, client leadership, feedback, resilience, and why building a strong community is essential for long-term success.

Listen to the full interview below, then check out some highlights from the conversation. 

Have a support system.

Highlight: Make sure you have your community around you. One, to keep you real and grounded. But two, it is so much more fun when you have other people that you can really compare notes with, compare horror, war stories, et cetera, laugh about all of the things that happen… Having your community and building your tribe around you, whether it's inside the walls of your organization or outside the walls in a peer group is so fundamental... Let's not take ourselves so seriously. It’s important to have fun with this. This is a fun thing that we get to do.” - Melissa Wisehart

Build an impenetrable force.

Highlight: “I always say advertising/marketing is the ultimate team sport—it is the ultimate class project. Luckily, it's a lot of Type A individuals… but there are moments where they have other stuff going on, other priorities. And the only way that we can get this stuff done is if we all cover to the right and to the left of the other… You have to protect the person to your right and your left, and when there's a moment of weakness, a mistake happens, whatever it may be, if you can cover for the other person next to you, then you are an impenetrable force. And that's the team dynamic that I look to build.” - Melissa Wisehart

Start with a foundation of trust.

Highlight: “I think the feedback thing is so important…. It really comes from this notion of wanting to continuously improve and get better. So that has to start with a foundation of trust. If my team does not trust me… then any feedback I'm going to give them really is going to be tough for them to digest, and it's going to make it that much harder when I have to deliver tough feedback. So, I really try and start with that foundation, and I also try and model it, as well.” - Melissa Wisehart

Be a straight shooter.

Highlight: “Part of what makes a great teammate or a great leader is really knowing what your weaknesses are and being able to ask for help…. I'm a straight shooter. For better or for worse, you're going to know where you're at and what I'm thinking and my perspective. And I think clients really value… having the trust that you're going to tell them the things that they don't want to hear, or if I have to handle a really tough conversation, a mistake was made, or whatever that is. So, I think those moments of self-doubt is being able to say, ‘Hey, I think maybe this is the answer, but I don't know. And here's what the risks are. Here's how we balance that.’” - Melissa Wisehart

Take time for self-reflection.

Highlight: “Taking that time for self-reflection, writing it down even, and then developing a plan to say, ‘Okay, I'm seeing a pattern. We're really struggling with this thing. How can we get a working group around this? How can we improve upon this?’... You’re not going to get it right the first time, the first 10 times, maybe the first 100 times, but I don't look at those as failures. I look at them as getting closer and closer to the best possible answer we could.” - Melissa Wisehart

Be a fierce advocate for others.

Highlight: “Having somebody speak up for somebody else, I've witnessed it several times; I've benefited from it several times. It's a really powerful thing and it can be a scary thing, but I would just encourage more people to be an advocate and a fierce advocate and speak up when you think that something isn't right, but also model the different behavior.” - Melissa Wisehart

Melissa’s advice is a reminder that success in media is built through curiosity, honesty, and community. Whether she’s encouraging teams to self-disrupt, give better feedback, set visible boundaries, or support one another through challenges, her message is clear: Stay curious, keep learning, and don’t be afraid to build what doesn’t have a playbook yet. Check out more inspiring conversations on the Pass the Mic page. 

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