Top agencies come together to support Western Sydney Ad School students with internships

In another example of how Western Sydney Ad School is growing in popularity, more Sydney agencies are getting on board and supporting the school’s push for diversity in the industry.

Says Rocky Ranallo, co-founder of the school: “From the very beginning we’ve always had tremendous support from the industry. Kirsty Muddle at Cummins & Partners, Simon Lee at The Hallway and Marcus [Tesoriero] and Brent [Kerby] at BWM Isobar have all offered internships with 2 of our students taking up the offers.

“In fact Casey now has a full-time job at The Hallway and Albert is still getting freelance from Marcus at BWM Isobar.”

Says Simon Lee, ECD and Partner, The Hallway: “When I heard that Rocky was training people in the Western Suburbs to be advertising creatives, I was interested. I had a cunning theory that if Rocky is doing the teaching, then by the time his students graduate, they should in theory have at least some of what I didn’t have when he didn’t hire me. So I hired the top graduate of the inaugural class of WSAS and my theory was validated.”

Says Kirsty Muddle, Managing Director, Cummins&Partners: “Encouraging a diverse pipeline of people into the industry is really important for creativity, for better administration, for many reasons. The boys are doing a great service to the industry and we’re more than happy to do our bit for them and the students.”

Adds Ranallo: “DDB, Paper Moose, We Collective, FLIPP, Coffee Cocoa Gunpowder and now CHE Proximity have also offered internships and we’d like to publicly thank them all.”

Justin Hind, CEO of CHE Proximity said they’d like to take on an intern and offer scholarships. Who wouldn’t want to work at the Agency of the Year?: “Developing the future talent of our industry is of a priority focus for us at CHEP. Different people, different experiences and different backgrounds make ideas better overall and with Rocky and Matt at the helm, developing their creative skills and thinking, we couldn’t be happier to be involved.

Says Ranallo: “Our Hardship Scholarships are slow on the uptake but again a lot of these agencies have offered them to the school, which we are really grateful for.”

Says Matt Smith, co-founder, WSAS: “We’re now into our 5th semester and have seen some great talent so overall we’re pretty happy on how it’s going.

“The next semester will start on the last Thursday in September and we hope, with enough students, we can start a Wednesday night class as well.

“It’s been an awesome experience teaching talented and ambitious students. They’re mostly Western Sydney based but from all over the planet and their ideas are just as diverse and uniquely creative as each of them. They’ll add value to any creative department.”

You can enrol online now for the late September semester.