SPOTLIGHT: Kai Jones Weidie

Dentsu SVP of Community and Engagement 

Written by Hannah Smith

Long before Kai Jones Weidie was helping build community and engagement in the workplace, she was learning how to find her place on a very different kind of team. Growing up as a synchronized swimmer, Weidie became accustomed to standing out. The experience taught her to find her voice, connect with those around her, and recognize that what makes someone different can also become one of their greatest strengths.

“Your difference can be a superpower,” Weidie said.

Years later, that lesson continues to shape how she approaches her career. Now SVP of Community and Engagement at Dentsu, Weidie has built a professional path centered around people: how they connect, how they find belonging, and how they bring their experiences to the spaces they occupy.

Weidie began her career in advertising in 2008, entering the industry amid an economic downturn while still figuring out where she wanted to go professionally. That search eventually led her to business development at law firms, marking the first of several turns that would shape her career.

Her path eventually brought her back to the advertising industry through the American Advertising Federation (AAF), where she managed, and later directed, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs through the organization’s Mosaic Center. Working with established initiatives and connecting with leaders committed to advancing inclusion in the industry helped Weidie move further into people-centered work.

In 2018, Weidie joined McCann New York as Director of Diversity and Engagement, an experience that also brought her closer to human resources. Moving between the two functions helped reinforce something that would become central to her approach: at their core, both are about people.

Weidie joined Bloomberg’s News and Media division in 2020, where she worked on a global team for the first time. The change in environment also helped her recognize what she had valued about advertising all along: its intersection of people and creativity.

When an opportunity at Dentsu arose, Weidie saw the chance to join “another organization that really believed in the work” while continuing to pursue what had become central to her career.

Today, her work as SVP of Community and Engagement focuses on many of the same questions that have followed her throughout that journey: how organizations can create meaningful opportunities for employees to connect, how service and volunteering can bring people together, and how employee feedback can inform strategies that make an organization a better place to work.

For Weidie, creating that kind of workplace goes beyond representation alone.

“A lot of successful organizations don’t just have the ideal gender balance,” Weidie said. “They also have women in positions of power and influence.”

Building that influence requires more than having a seat at the table. Weidie has seen the value of professionals who ask questions, offer solutions, and think intentionally about the relationships they are building, both within their organizations and across their industries.

For women entering communications, part of that process involves “cultural fluency.” Weidie explained that this can be learned through experience and relationships. By making an effort to understand colleagues whose experiences differ from their own, young professionals can broaden their perspectives while building the trust that allows people to share their experiences more openly.

That understanding of cultural fluency reaches back to Weidie’s years as a synchronized swimmer. She said she “was often the only Black girl or person of color in the pool,” an experience that taught her how to find common ground with people who were different from her without losing sight of what made her stand out.

“I consider it to be a skill,” Weidie said, reflecting on how those early experiences have carried into her professional life.

That philosophy, recognizing difference while finding opportunities for connection, has become a consistent thread throughout Weidie’s career. Whether she is thinking about community within an organization, developing cultural fluency, or building a professional network, she continually returns to the importance of relationships.

And those relationships, Weidie said, should be nurtured long before someone needs to call upon them.

As professionals become more senior, she has found that opportunities often emerge through connections rather than simply through job postings. The strongest networkers do not reach out only when they need a favor or are searching for their next role. They check in, stay familiar, and look for opportunities to support others along the way.

“It’s not just about having friends; it’s what does your network look like?” Weidie said.

That emphasis on sustained relationships also speaks to the value of professional communities like New York Women in Communications. Beyond expanding a list of contacts, organizations like NYWICI offer women at different stages of their careers opportunities to learn from one another, build meaningful relationships, and develop the kind of professional influence Weidie sees as essential.

Those relationships may become even more valuable as the communications industry enters a period of rapid change.

“This is a moment of transformation,” Weidie said, pointing to artificial intelligence and other forces reshaping industries and the way people work.

For young professionals wondering whether the jobs they are pursuing today will look the same years from now, Weidie encourages them to look beyond the boundaries of their individual roles. Learning how an organization functions, understanding its priorities, and recognizing how one’s work contributes to the larger business can provide a foundation for navigating change.

“What you’re doing right now, you may not be doing in two, five years,” Weidie said.

Preparing for that uncertainty may require young professionals to extend themselves beyond what is immediately expected of them. But Weidie is equally conscious of the conversation surrounding burnout. Growth, in her view, requires finding the “sweet spot” between taking initiative and protecting one’s own energy, being, as she put it, “in service to yourself in a professional way.”

Her own career is evidence that a professional path does not have to follow a straight line. From advertising and law firm business development to DEI, HR, news and media, and now community and engagement, Weidie has continued to adapt while remaining grounded in a consistent belief in the importance of people.

For women navigating an equally changing communications landscape, that philosophy offers a reminder that career growth is about more than finding the perfect next position. It is also about investing in relationships, remaining curious about the people around you, and developing the confidence to recognize what you uniquely bring to the table.

After all, as Weidie learned long before entering the corporate world, sometimes the very thing that makes you stand out can become one of your greatest strengths.