WHEN Wendy Clark walks into the sparsely outfitted meeting room of DDB's Kallang office in her stilettos, she is all smiles - none of that under-the-radar bluster or self-conscious preciousness that people in power are wont to exuding. Yet, as BT photographer Kelvin Chng also senses it - somehow, she fills the frame.

The new global CEO and president of DDB Worldwide is the first woman to have scaled such rarefied heights in the North American advertising industry. But the mother of three is on a mission to make sure 50-50 gender representation - under her stewardship - applies to the boardroom as well as to the rank-and-file in the DDB network that spans 200 offices in over 90 countries and has more than 13,000 employees on its payroll.

She has given impassioned talks at DDB's North American meetings, taking a leaf from the playbook of Shelley Zalis, CEO of The Female Quotient, who famously wrote: "Talent has no gender, talent has no race, talent has no religion, talent has no age." DDB has its own version of that clarion call to close the gap - a "Talent Has No Gender" social campaign, which the DDB boss wants everyone to embrace.