Jennifer Larson, VP, Director of Global Brand Management & Governance at BMO Financial Group, was appointed to ensure the bank’s brand strategy remained well articulated and consistently communicated throughout the organization, with a focus on building equity and an eye for customer experience. She was instrumental in BMO’s 2014 brand refresh, continues to shape the brand management strategy and evolve the creative platform today. In her current role she also leads a number of corporate initiatives, the most significant being BMO’s bicentennial celebration. To celebrate the bank’s 200th anniversary, she developed an unprecedented, year-long multi-faceted experiential program aimed at engagement through events and activations, digital, social and custom content. She leads the program management office and continues to oversee execution through to the culmination at the end of the year. Prior to her current post, she was responsible for overseeing the strategy, execution and continuous improvement of U.S. advertising and brand management. In this role she led a team that significantly enhanced the digital, search and social marketing efforts for the organization, evolving the campaign approach for direct response, awareness and engagement-based programs. In 2011, she led the rebranding and subsequent brand launch of BMO Harris Bank as part of an acquisition that doubled the bank’s size in the U.S.  The integrated campaign resulted in increased unaided awareness across the footprint and exceeded norms on favorability, consideration and recall. Beginning her tenure at BMO (then Harris Bank), she was responsible for regional marketing, where she worked to centralize the bank’s marketing practice to ensure a unified brand voice and consistent creative platform.  She then moved on to develop a marketing strategy for the newly created retail small business division at the bank before taking on the acquisition assignment. She holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in Public Relations and French from Illinois State University and an MBA in Marketing Management from DePaul University.