As Burson’s Global Chief Digital & Intelligence Officer, Grant Toups is charged with driving the agency’s growth and delivery of digital services to solve client challenges and deliver measurable business impact. He leads a global team of professionals managing a suite of offerings including digital and social communications; reputation enhancement and defense; technology and AI advisory; and advanced intelligence, research, measurement, and analytics.

A 2021 PR Week Dashboard 25 honoree, Toups is regarded as one of the most influential executives in CommTech and a leading voice on the technological future of communications. He is a leader in the Arthur W. Page Society, serving as an influential voice in the group’s thought leadership efforts, a convener of the annual Page Future Leaders’ Experience, and a founding member and operating committee member of Page Up. A frequent speaker and lecturer, he also serves on the Board of Directors of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Public Relations.

Prior to Burson, Toups served as Hill & Knowlton’s first global chief technology officer, leading the agency’s end-to-end technology and intelligence strategy, working across H&K and WPP to build the firm’s ecosystem of technology-based offerings and improve the use of data science and analytics to drive client success and employee growth and experience. During his tenure he architected the formation of the firm’s intelligence and technology capability and the creation and launch of the agency’s AI-powered tech portfolio: the H&K Sonar risk sensing and disinformation intelligence tool and The Fount data integration and analysis tool.

Toups joined H&K from ICF Next, where he played a principal role in conceptualizing and launching the agency and integrating nearly a dozen independent businesses under one global brand. He went on to lead large portions of the business, including the technology, experience and loyalty, and strategy and transformation business units, a roughly $80 million operating unit. He also served in key functional roles leading growth and business development, marketing, and analyst relations for the agency.

Prior to ICF Next, Toups led PulsePoint Group as its managing partner and president. During his tenure, after helping to found the firm, he created and led the firm’s organizational optimization and Transformation practice and deployed some of corporate America’s first social media listening command centers.

Toups has worked with leading clients at Anthem, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Centene, Charter Communications, Chevron, Corteva, CVS Health, Fannie Mae, Ford Motor, General Electric, Google/Alphabet, Hilton, HPE, Hyatt, Johnson & Johnson, Lam Research, Lexus, Kaiser Permanente, Novartis, Pfizer, Spotify, Toyota, UnitedHealth Group, Visa, The Walt Disney Company and Wells Fargo, among others.

Toups is an avid concert go-er and music aficionado, an amateur potter, a seasoned scuba diver, an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and a PR Week 2022 Pride in PR honoree. He is a native of Thibodaux, LA, and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

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