Svetlana Picou heads up the Global Olympic Practice at Weber Shandwick and is also a member of the European Management team overseeing all aspects of the company’s efforts to build a strong PR offering with partner and affiliate agencies in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Over the years, Svetlana has specialised in running global communications programmes for blue chip companies, governments and Olympic & sports clients advising them on campaigning, corporate reputation, brand building, issues management and specialist industry relations.
Svetlana has advised and led global teams on some of the most prestigious Olympic projects in the past years. Her experience includes overseeing international communications on the controversial 2012 bidding campaign with Paris 2012, leading a global agency team from across 29 markets on the award-winning and successful Sochi 2014 bid campaign as well as being a global communications advisor to Tokyo 2016. Svetlana currently is a global CRL for the Sochi 2014 Organising Committee for the first Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Russia advising on all aspects of strategic communications internationally and in Russia.
Svetlana’s multicultural background and experience in managing high impact global campaigns has given her a strong understanding of the global and local needs of clients in practically any part of the world. She is fluent in English, French, Russian, Norwegian and has a working knowledge of German.
Prior to joining Weber Shandwick in January 2001, Svetlana was with Ogilvy Public Relations for several years where she co-ordinated international campaigns for a number of blue chip technology & corporate clients, such as IBM EMEA.
Svetlana is married and has two daughters.