AdFest 2025 Welcomes Annie Castellano as Speaker

Annie Castellano, Head of Brand + Agency and Segment Marketing Officer at Edward Jones, will bring her expertise in brand strategy and creative leadership to the AdFest 2025 Fireside Chat Brand Marketing and AI: Representing Your Brand’s Purpose and Values in Changing Times. With experience leading both client- and agency-side teams for iconic brands such as Nike, UPS, and Anheuser-Busch/InBev, Annie will share how marketers can preserve authenticity and purpose in an AI-driven landscape—exploring the balance between personalization and responsible storytelling, the risks of misrepresentation, and the role of cross-functional collaboration in keeping brand values front and center.

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Equal parts creative and analytical, emotional and rational, ridiculous and reasonable, Annie loves puzzles—especially the human variety. She leads Edward Jones’ brand team and serves as head of the internal agency, charged with continually evolving, elevating, and activating the brand for the full spectrum of audiences, both external and internal. She also serves as Segment Chief Marketing Officer, shaping strategy and driving growth across one of the firm’s key business units.

She and her teams create strategies, platforms, and campaigns that bring differentiated value forward through emotionally and intellectually resonant content. Driven by her belief that consistency yields trust—and that trust is the currency of both business and life—she is obsessed with delivering work that works.

Prior to her client-side roles, Annie held several positions on the agency side, starting as a junior copywriter and rising to Executive Creative Director/Chief Creative Officer. She’s worked with some of the most iconic brands in the world, including Anheuser-Busch/InBev, Nike, UPS, Cigna, Ascension Health, vitaminwater, and Major League Baseball.

Annie is president of the board of the APA Adoption Center, vice chair of the board for Rx Outreach, and volunteers for a number of organizations whose missions support the community. She was named one of St. Louis’ Most Influential Businesswomen by the St. Louis Business Journal in 2012, as well as part of their 2014 class of 40 Under 40.

A summa cum laude graduate of Saint Louis University, Annie loves Peach Fresca, NPR, sneakers, the dictionary, dogs with old-lady names, cartoons, bookstores, watching soccer on TV, bicycles, office supplies, crossword puzzles, and maple syrup.

It appears she also likes to talk about herself in the third person.

Specialties: brand strategy, marketing, creative development, agency operations, communication