Lee will also look after day-to-day leadership of the agency’s health comms division while its managing director, Rebecca Ferguson, is on maternity leave.
She will help lead work with Red Health’s pharma and healthcare clients, which include Sanofi, Celgene and Boehringer Ingelheim.
Previous experience
Lee has more than 20 years’ experience in corporate and brand comms for pharma, biotech and health companies and has a string of management roles at top agencies under her belt.
She was most recently deputy global healthcare practice chair at Burson-Marsteller and was seconded to Vertex Pharmaceuticals as director of comms for the North Region, responsible for UK, Ireland and Nordics.
After starting her career at CPR as a senior account executive, Lee was at Hill+Knowlton, where she rose to become a board director with the top-ten agency.
The next step in Lee’s rise to the senior ranks was as a consultant for Chandler Chicco Agency, before moving to Ketchum where she was managing director of healthcare.
She left Ketchum to become a director at Luther Pendragon, where she worked for more than two years before joining MSL Group as managing director of its UK and EMEA health team.
During her career so far, Lee has also been appointed as a council member for the PRCA and chair of the CIPR’s diversity and inclusion forum.
New role
Commenting on her new role at Red Health, Lee said: "Moving forward we’ll be building on our international work alongside our UK assignments, bringing smart, creative integrated comms to our clients."
Mike Morgan, chief executive of Red Consultancy, added: "Avril brings deep experience as a proven leader with a reputation for delivering strategic creative solutions."
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