Stephanie DeViteri is taking over as Inizio Evoke Comms’ president for North America, returning to the agency where she spent 20 years after a two-year stint running the healthcare practice at MSL.
She takes over the role from Maureen Byrne, who left the agency at the end of March. She’ll report to Maryellen Royle, group president at Inizio Evoke Comms.
“The company has undergone a transformation since I’ve been gone, but really in the past six months, where there’s enough change that makes it feel challenging, but also familiarity,” she told Endpoints News.
Those changes include the rebranding of Evoke to Inizio Evoke in January as the healthcare network unified its agencies under one holding company umbrella. The current Inizio Evoke Comms is the result of combining the Evoke Kyne, Evoke Canale and Evoke Galliard public relations and communications practices. The rebranding came more than a year after Evoke parent company Huntsworth and Ashfield merged with Inizio.
In her new role, DeViteri will oversee about 150 employees in North America and take on responsibility for driving the communications agency’s growth. The majority of Inizio Evoke Comms’ clients are pharma and biotech companies and non-profit organizations.
DeViteri brings a personal connection to the role as a caregiver for her mother who lives with Alzheimer’s disease. She said she understands firsthand the difficulty at times in finding accurate information, resources and education.
“I’m coming back to a different company in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, I’m a different leader,” she said. “I feel bolder to take risks and push boundaries where we can in terms of how we think about the work and what we put out into the world.”