McCann To Receive Alumni Medal
School of Education and Social Policy alumna Renetta McCann, a global leader in advertising, media, and organizational change, will receive the alumni medal, Northwestern University’s Alumni Association’s highest honor.
McCann will be presented the medal during Homecoming and Reunion Weekend Nov. 14-17, 2024. She is the School’s first winner since 2014 when veteran political reporter Kelly O’Donnell (BS87) returned to campus to receive the honor, which recognizes alumni who have made a transformative impact on their fields, performed exemplary volunteer service to society or demonstrated an outstanding record of support for the University.
In addition to McCann, the 2024 Medalists include Williams S. Evans Jr., the retired president of Peoples Gas and dedicated Northwestern volunteer who has held numerous leadership roles in the public and private sectors, including at the University; and William Osborn, the former Fortune 500 CEO and prominent civic leader who chaired the Northwestern Board of Trustees during the University’s historic fundraising initiative, We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern. They join a select group of more than 100 alumni, including Supreme Court justices and a Nobel laureate, who have been honored since 1932.
McCann, who earned her bachelor’s degree from the School of Communication in 1978 and her master’s in Learning and Organizational Change in 2012, is chief inclusion experience officer for Publicis.
She’s also a lecturer for SESP’s Master’s and Executive Learning and Organizational Change programs, where she teaches classes such as Designing Organizations and Leading Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Organizations.
A South Side Chicago girl at heart, McCann has spent much of her career as a change agent focused on talent development. Her first job at Leo Burnett, which she got through a campus interview as a senior, led her to the field of advertising media, which has grown exponentially in the decades since.
“It fundamentally set me on a path of being a trailblazer for Black professionals in media and general marketing agencies,” she says. “Eventually I realized I was signing up for something pretty rare.”
She went on to become many “firsts” at various companies: the first Black media director, the first Black executive vice president in media, and the first Black female CEO of a global media company.
“Along with doing the work, I was also managing the intangibles of what possibilities that might create for other Black people,” she says.
After holding many roles at advertising agencies Leo Burnett, Starcom Worldwide, and Publicis Groupe, she returned home to Northwestern to earn a second degree—a master’s in learning and organizational change from the School of Education and Social Policy.
A fan of the six-word memoir— a handful of pithy words crafted to tell a story or sum up a life—McCann’s admirers created a website filled with tributes to the trailblazer for her induction into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Fame last year. They included “Thanks for lifting as you climb,” and “So glad she’s in my corner.”
Her own six word memoir, she said, might be “Still trying to change the world.”
“Maybe the way I get to change the world now is by somewhat influencing the next generation of leaders,” she says.