Saneel Radia
Chief Executive Officer &
Chief Innovation Officer
As CEO, Saneel Radia leads the overall Proto business. In this role, he is hands-on with clients and is accountable for guiding the overall offerings of the firm to ensure they are best suited for rapidly evolving client needs. Saneel also serves as Proto’s Chief Innovation Officer and is a widely followed thought leader in the space, speaking on corporate innovation principles and setting industry standards often adopted by the world’s most important organizations.
Prior to Proto, Saneel served as Global Chief Innovation Officer at R/GA, where he led the global Business Transformation practice, developing the innovation practices across the R/GA network, both on behalf of clients and internally. In this role, Saneel grew the innovation practice from nascency to a global offering across four continents that created the company’s most successful innovation case studies over a five year period and eventually helped its transformation from digital agency to a management consulting disruptor.
Partnering with C-level executives, Saneel helps with the creation of new businesses, models, products, and brands. He leads a multidisciplinary team of commercial and brand strategists, visual and verbal designers, technologists, data analysts, and CX specialists. He has consistently driven growth for clients during times of disruption. Specifically, he has architected strategy and helped lead large scale innovation efforts for clients such as Walmart, Google Chrome, BMW, Samsung, PetCo, Athena Health, LinkedIn, Siemens, ESPN, AdventHealth, Illumina and PepsiCo, transforming their businesses at critical moments of customer behavior change enabled by technology.
Saneel’s own background is as interdisciplinary as his team, holding titles including Chief Innovation Officer, Head of Strategy, Creative Director, and Media Director. Through these experiences, he has pioneered new disciplines in both corporate innovation and marketing. In marketing and advertising, he has accelerated the development of innovative programmatic practices and engagement planning in media, and a creative application philosophy called Media Design. In corporate innovation, he and his team continue to invent bespoke outputs for large scale clients with a focus on practicality and utility.
As one of the industry’s most exciting thought leaders, Saneel has spoken at numerous international conferences such as Cannes Lions, Fast Company Innovation Festival, Adobe 99u, El Ojo, and Social Media Week. Saneel has been consistently recognized for breaking new ground over the past two decades, including as an Advertising Age “Twentysomething,” a Mediaweek “Media All-Star,” an AdWeek and Popsugar 40 Under 40 “Young Influential,” a Campaign “Digital 40 Over 40,” one of the historic 4A’s “100 People Who Make Marketing Great.” As it relates to his long-term contributions to multiple industries, he is an awardee of the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement, MAIP’s Paragon Award for lifetime achievement, and the Berlin School of Creative Leadership’s “Distinguished Alumnus” recognition. His work has won numerous awards including Webby’s, Cannes Lions, One Show Pencils, Most Contagious Awards, and Effies.
Saneel holds an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership and a B.S. in Advertising from University of Texas. In 2020, he was the commencement speaker for his alma mater's College of Communications TM&A graduates (from a safe social distance!). He sits on the board of multiple nonprofits including the 4As Foundation, dedicated to improving diversity and inclusion in the marketing industry, and +POOL, a series of water-filtering floating pools making public water accessible to all New Yorkers. He also sits on the advisory boards of companies ranging across industries, such as climate VC Third Sphere, cross-platform gaming platform Team Hero and fine artist fintech company Link To Art. He can be followed for his thoughts about innovation, marketing, and design on X and LinkedIn.