The agency’s newest hire brings house-side brand-building experience from JW Anderson and Loewe into its talent and partnerships arm
Karla Otto has named Isabel Mascareñas as its new VP of Talent, Brand Partnerships, adding a communications executive with direct house-side experience to an agency that typically operates from the outside looking in. The move signals the agency’s continued interest in hiring talent who have actually run brand storytelling from within a house, rather than only advised on it from an agency seat, at a moment when Karla Otto’s roster spans collaborations, ambassador campaigns, and brand launches for clients including Calvin Klein, Cartier, Loewe, and Valentino.
Mascareñas joins Karla Otto after several years working alongside Jonathan Anderson across Madrid, Paris, and London, most recently as head of communications at JW Anderson under chief executive officer Jenny Galimberti. In that role, she helped recast the label as a lifestyle proposition centered on craft and heritage, overseeing new store openings as part of that repositioning. Her career began at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 2014, followed by global communications and VIP relations roles at Loewe and JW Anderson that gave her a working knowledge of how houses build brand equity across markets.
The hire arrives as agencies compete for talent who understand brand-building from the inside, since that perspective carries weight with clients looking for strategic counsel rather than execution alone. Mascareñas’ background repositioning JW Anderson as a lifestyle brand maps closely onto the kind of collaboration and ambassador work Karla Otto handles for its luxury clients, suggesting the agency is betting on operational fluency as a differentiator in a crowded talent and partnerships field.