Headshot of Sarah Lent

August 2, 2021

VSA Partners Appoints Sarah Lent as Chief Marketing Officer

Experienced business leader brings design firm, creative agency and media agency tenures to her new post.

VSA Partners, the hybrid brand strategy and design and communications agency headquartered in Chicago, has appointed Sarah Lent as its Chief Marketing Officer. The announcement was made by VSA President Anne-Marie Rosser.

Sarah is a veteran marketing executive with over 20 years’ experience in developing business solutions and unlocking growth opportunities for clients through brand, digital innovation, design, communications and media. Lent will spearhead VSA’s growth efforts, including business development, marketing, media relations, brand leadership and content creation.

A graduate of the University of Virginia, Lent has worked across 4 continents and brings to her position at VSA a deep passion for taking emerging technologies coupled with world-class creativity in order to contextualize them in the real world. She is fueled by looking for the leap-frog moments of change and taking clients on the journey—something she has quickly proven in her short tenure at VSA by the partnership she secured with Ripple as the premiere creative partner for their $250m NFT Creators Fund.

Sarah has held a number of senior positions at agencies all over the world, including running growth across the US for Essence, the performance media agency that’s part of Group M, and for the EMEA region while at R/GA, a leading global digital innovation, design and communications agency.

Prior to R/GA, Lent spent seven years with Interbrand, serving in client-facing and leadership roles in the UK, South Africa, and the US. Over the course of her career she has led teams working on a range of global brands across categories, including Disney, Airbnb, Westbrook, Adobe, LVMH, Ikea, Siemens, Diageo and more.

Lent states, “We live in a noisy and highly transactional world. Every second, a different voice urges brands to pivot to a new type of content, dive headfirst into emerging forms of media, and monetize each trend while simultaneously creating the next one. Brands can no longer compete on convenience or ease of use—technology is the equalizer, not the differentiator. This is why I am so excited to be joining VSA. As a hybrid brand strategy, design and communications agency, VSA has the unique capability to help brands stand out from the clutter by creating better human experiences at key moments of impact, which in turn yield loyalty and social capital. VSA approaches each challenge with the rigor of a management consulting practice, coupled with world-class storytelling and design, ensuring everything that we deliver is applicable and contextualized in the real world, delivering substantial impact for the long-term. Brands don’t need help making more noise. They need a partner, like VSA, to help them rise above it. “

With a strong commitment to social causes and activism, Lent most recently served on the Board of Directors for Infinite Family for seven years, an organization built to connect teens across townships in South Africa with video mentors working to integrate confidence and self-reliance as they prepare for their lives as young adults and beyond. She resides in Marin County.

About VSA Partners

VSA Partners is a hybrid brand strategy and design agency with a 40-year history of solving complex business problems. We deliver design-driven experiences that perform in market, realizing the future of a brand for some of the world’s most respected and forward-thinking organizations, including Google, Nike, IBM, Robinhood and Affirm. Our approach hinges upon deep collaboration with our clients to identify, prioritize and convert individual interactions into a positive impact on long-term value in a highly transactional and noisy world. Global by trade, but unapologetically midwestern at heart, an intrinsic desire to help fuels our pursuit of solutions of substance. Amplifying brands — not to add to the noise — but to find a voice that rises above it. VSA Partners. Where brands breakthrough.