NEW YORK — After spending months installing its global leadership, BCW’s latest hire, Kristen Lisanti, is charged with ensuring the agency is the kind of place where people want to work.

“A strong culture is critical to business success,” CEO Donna Imperato told the Holmes Report. "People are our product. If you create the right culture … you can attract people and keep them."

Lisanti, who’s spent much of her career focused on organizational development, has formally been named chief culture officer. As such, Lisanti will oversee the cultivation, and then sustenance, of a BCW culture that reflects the agency’s values, diverse employees and work ethic.

Lisanti spent the last four years with Vision 7 as part of Blue Focus International, most recently as a VP of international talent leading organizational change initiatives with a focus on cultural integration and leadership development. Lisanti began her career in integrated communications with an emphasis in public relations, designing campaigns that drove social and behavioral change.

Lisanti will report to Imperato, reflecting the importance she puts on the initiative. “Culture doesn’t happen by itself. And if there no one constantly looking at it and nurturing it, it can wither away or doesn’t become something cohesive,” Imperato said, adding that doing that could involve steps from responding to employee input to establishing companywide volunteer initiatives.

“Stuff like that keeps people together. And the client feels it too,” she said.

Lisanti's hire is the latest step in the effort to build out BCW since it was created through a dramatic merger of Cohn & Wolfe and Burson-Marsteller in March.