WFA CEO Stephan Loerke to step down in 2027, having led organisation for 24 years

WFA’s CEO Stephan Loerke is to step down in the middle of 2027, having led the organisation for more than two decades. His tenure has driven a transformation in the organisation’s fortunes and significant growth in terms of scale, impact and importance for brand marketers and policy leaders around the world.

The process of recruiting a replacement starts now with a five-person panel including WFA President, David Wheldon, Vice-President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Ferrero, Phil Myers, Treasurer and Director General of the French Advertisers Association (UDM), Jean Luc Chétrit, Chief Consumer and Marketing Officer and Chief Growth Officer, International Foods at PepsiCo, Jane Wakely and Chief Marketing Officer at Diageo, Cristina Diezhandino.

Stephan has led the organisation through a period of significant growth. He joined the organisation in 1998 as Public Affairs Manager reporting to former Managing Director, Bernhard Adriaensens. The organisation then brought together 19 member companies and 32 national advertiser associations and had a turnover of approximately €500k. It ran two working groups, one for media and one for policy professionals.

In 2002, Stephan was made Deputy Managing Director before taking over the organisation as CEO in 2003. Under his leadership, the organisation quickly grew in terms of membership, working groups and staff headcount.

Today WFA unites more than 150 of the world’s biggest brands with national associations in 60 countries and has a turnover in excess of €10m. Staff numbers have grown from three to 33 and regional offices have been set up in London, Singapore and New York supporting an increasingly vibrant network of national associations.

WFA organises over 100 meetings a year across 15 peer-to-peer networks, bringing together policy and privacy professionals and experts from media, insights, procurement, in-housing, AI and creator marketing, alongside the flagship WFA CMO Forum, which unites more than 350 global CMOs, including many of the most respected names in marketing.

“Very few people in their careers get to have such an impact on a single organisation and industry. Stephan has transformed WFA into an organisation that punches well above its weight. It has become a trusted partner for so many of the world’s biggest brands and a critical champion for better marketing,” said WFA President, David Wheldon. “He has built a phenomenal team and empowered them to produce outstanding work. As a multilinguist and multiculturalist he knows how to get the best out of people and leads with humility and clarity. He will move on in July 2027 leaving the WFA in much better shape than he found it, a great legacy. I have had the privilege of working closely with Stephan for over a decade, a very special man who has kept smiling no matter how tough things got.”

Stephan said: "It has been a privilege, and the honour of a lifetime, to lead the WFA for so long. I'm immensely proud of the organisation we've grown and the team we've built, and deeply grateful to all WFA colleagues and members, past and present, who have helped make it what it is today. But the time to say goodbye hasn't come yet. I'll keep giving my all until my very last day at the organisation."

A champion of better marketing

Under Stephan’s leadership the organisation has championed effective advertising self-regulation, demonstrating that by adopting best practice leading companies can carve out paths to brand growth while aligning their marketing policies with societal expectations, even in sensitive areas such as advertising and children, food and alcohol marketing.

He has been a passionate advocate for effective advertising self-regulation. He played a key role in the establishment of the European Advertising Standards Association (EASA) in 1998 and served on the EASA Executive Committee for 20 years.

In 2016, he played a seminal role in the establishment of the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (ICAS), which fosters best practice between self-regulatory organisations (SROs) globally. He has been an ICAS Vice-President since its inception.

He has been a consistent champion of the voice of advertisers among the digital platforms, helping to ensure that the needs of brands are heard beyond sales teams for a channel that has grown from roughly 1% to 70% of global ad spend during his time at WFA.

In line with the organisation’s commitment to better marketing, he has also advocated for open, transparent and future-proof cross-media measurement and played a key role in driving the WFA Halo project, a global framework that has provided the blueprint for Origin and Aquila in the UK and US respectively.

But his greatest legacy will be the sense of community that he has helped create among client-side marketers worldwide – across sectors and across geographies – built on shared values, a shared agenda and strong sense of purpose.

That spirit is always on display at WFA Global Marketer Week, which typically attracts over 1000 senior marketing and policy professionals, and has become an established event in the annual marketing calendar and a must-attend for client-side marketers. It has now been held on every continent in partnership with WFA’s national associations.

Stephan previously worked in marketing and management roles at L'Oréal in Paris and Brussels. He studied business economics at the Saint Gall Business School in Switzerland, after which he worked at the United Nations in New York.

He will continue to lead the organisation until July 2027 and support the process for the appointment of his successor.

“I flippantly told a head-hunter 30 years ago that I could be interested if they found a job that combined my two great passions; international relations and marketing. But I never thought there was such a role. I consider myself extremely lucky to have worked at and led WFA. It’s been a dream come true, in the deepest and most personal sense,” he said.

For press enquiries, please contact Will Gilroy at w.gilroy@wfanet.org, +32 499 20 32 20