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MUMBAI, INDIA // Shagun Seda is the Creative Head of the West offices of the DDB Mudra Group. She has been in the business for 16 years but still struggles to write about herself in third person.

An Air Force kid, Shagun grew up in different parts of India learning and observing insights from its different cultures. She pretty much picked her career in advertising as a little girl who believed that programs were the breaks between commercials. A little wiser now, she believes that advertising has the power to impact change not only in business, but in culture.

Her work has won metals and honours at Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Spikes, Kyoorius, Effies, WARC and Abby’s among others.

Shagun began her career at TBWA\India where she spent almost a decade - from learning the ropes as a copywriter to building the agency as a creative director.

Over the years, Shagun has helped build iconic multinational brands such as Unilever, McDonald’s, Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson, Visa, Adidas, TikTok, Bumble, Nissan, Diageo, Beiersdorf along with national giants like Hotstar, Big Bazaar, Aditya Birla Group, Marico, Times Group and SBI, to name a few.

Shagun led the team that created Stayfree’s Project Free Period, one of the most celebrated social pieces by any brand in India since 2018. The project helped start a brave conversation around not just one, but two topics considered taboo in Indian culture - menstruation and prostitution. The initiative has bagged over 50 metals & honours across prestigious award shows like Cannes, Spikes, D&AD, One Show, Effies, Kyoorius, WARC and AdStars including a Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2019. It won the inaugural D&AD Impact Prize Fund and was also the only piece of work from all of Asia to be shortlisted in the Titanium category at Cannes 2018.

Shagun belongs to an elite group of 12 women handpicked from across the world to be a part of DDB Worldwide’s inaugural Phyllis Project. The project recognizes the significant role women played in igniting the creative revolution and the need for gender equality among our creative leaders today.

And this is right in line with Shagun’s belief that equality needs to be more than just a cause; it needs to be an ambition. She lives this belief not only through creating work that empowers, but also by herself being an inspiration for the next generation of women leaders at DDB Mudra.

In the aftermath of 2018’s Me Too movement, Shagun joined 11 others to form The Collective – an independent body of female leaders from the Indian ad and design industry to help address sexual harassment at the work place.

In her downtime, she keeps herself busy sucking at photography, while trying to overcome the fact that two of her Instagram photos were once featured on a crowd-sourced cover of TIME magazine.