Mile Marker Adds Key Growth Leaders as Agency Caps Breakout First Year

Neil Smith joins as EVP of Growth and Emilie Vasu as VP of Business Development to accelerate and scale Mile Marker's rapid momentum since its February 2025 launch

NEW YORK, Dec. 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As the industry settles into a new and uncertain era following the closing of Omnicom Group's acquisition of Interpublic Group of Cos., independent agencies are positioning themselves to opportunistically capture share of voice with marketers. With this goal in mind, Mile Marker, the swiftly growing indie media agency, launched in February 2025, today announced the appointments of Neil Smith as EVP of Growth and Emilie Vasu as VP of Business Development.

The hires signal Mile Marker as poised for a new phase of accelerated expansion following a standout first year. The agency, backed by private equity firm, Lightview Capital, has been tailored strategically to meet the specific omnichannel ambitions of growth marketers.

In just 10 months, Mile Marker pitched 13 opportunities and won nine—a win rate driven by the agency's commitment to overdelivering on every ask and operating with speed and agility rarely achieved by independents. With no global mandates to satisfy, the agency is singularly focused on solving client challenges as a domestic enterprise, backed by a human-led, AI-supported operating model that has attracted increasingly larger scopes of work. The agency's razor-sharp Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) focused on democratized technology, free of walled gardens, has been supported by Lightview with significant investment to generate a best-in-class full range of capabilities to support aggressive, thoughtful growth.

"We built Mile Marker to move fast, stay accountable to clients, and empower our people with automation and AI—not the other way around," said Scott Shamberg, President & CEO of Mile Marker. "Neil and Emilie bring the precision, discipline, and firepower to scale that model as demand for true omnichannel, versus digitally focused omnichannel execution, grows. They are both seasoned vets, with eclectic expertise and skill sets carved out of both holdco and indie stints. They are well versed in changing the wheels while the car is going 90 MPH."

Mile Marker's 2025 growth was intentional and disciplined. The team limited the number of pitches to maintain performance levels and pressure test their go to market narrative. That required the right balance of human talent and machine intelligence. As a new entrant, the agency pursued targeted, high-quality opportunities that offered the strongest chances to win. This meant declining many opportunities that didn't fit into Mile Marker's growth ambitions.

To support expanding client needs, Mile Marker deepened its talent bench, refined its client and Center of Excellence delivery model, and continued to produce both strong media performance and high NPS scores—validating its human-first approach. Neely Thomas, Mile Marker's VP People & Development, formalized the agency's recruitment and retention strategy upon joining the shop in March, contributing to a 90% employee retention rate.

The agency also strengthened Relay, its fully accessible, non–walled-garden tech stack, adding new technology partners, including leading Marketing Mix Modeling(MMM) platform, Arima, and proving it can deliver enterprise-grade performance without the tech debt common in holding-company environments. Arima is the latest partner now integrated into Relay, providing Mile Maker a customizable MMM solution that fits its ICP. And with a new office in New York, Mile Marker established a premium space for collaboration and in-person pitches.

"With the foundation built in 2025, which included a rebranding in a condensed period, we're proud of our ability to execute on integration. This puts us in a position to pursue other new M&A to allow us to scale aggressively but thoughtfully," said Shamberg. "Neil and Emilie will bring focus and structure to identifying, shaping, and winning the right kinds of growth—especially as we go after larger brands and continue to evolve our Relay tech stack."

Smith, who will report to Shamberg, will oversee the agency's growth strategy and market approach, while Vasu, who will report to Smith, will lead opportunity management, pitch development, and cross-functional coordination. Together, they will create a more rigorous, streamlined engine for finding and serving ambitious growth brands, ensuring no opportunity is missed and every response is elevated.

Smith joins from Crossmedia, where he was Chief Growth Officer. He also held the same title at Dentsu Media U.S. Prior to that, he oversaw all new business activities for Carat, Dentsu X, and iProspect in the U.S. He led teams to more than 100 wins in the 6 years he was at Dentsu, including Kroger, LinkedIn, Peloton, JC Penney and Heineken.

Vasu brings more than 15 years of experience leading new business and client growth initiatives at DAC, SET Creative, DigitasLBi, and JWT New York. Her career is defined by transformative client wins and the ability to pair creativity and strategy to fuel agency momentum.

About Mile Marker
Mile Marker is the preeminent, end to end media agency deliberately built for the ambitions of growth marketers. We provide an unmatched range of capabilities, simplified access to data profiles and a carefully layered technology stack that holds accountable our media plans, and the humans that develop them, to deliver measurable, impactful business outcomes with true integrity. Mile Marker's client roster includes FreshPet, DoorDash, Webster Bank, and Harry's, among others. For more information, go to www.milemarkeragency.com.

Press Contact:
Hank Kim
Middle 8 Media
[email protected]

SOURCE Mile Marker LLC