Fassnacht Michael

Michael Fassnacht

President of the Chicagoland Region and Chief Growth Officer, Clayco

As President of the Chicagoland Region and the first-ever Chief Growth Officer, Michael Fassnacht oversees all aspects of the Chicagoland operations, including business development, marketing, and sales, and serves as a mentor and coach to the team working alongside him. Additionally, as the Chief Growth Officer, he will support all organizational units to help further elevate Clayco as a world-class B2B marketer to meet its ambitious growth plans for the next decade and beyond.

Michael Fassnacht is a German native with nearly 20 years of experience in Chicago, first as the CEO of one of the largest global advertising firms, Foote Cone & Belding (FCB), and most recently as the first-ever Chief Marketing Officer for the City of Chicago and the CEO of World Business Chicago, the city’s economic development entity. Michael started his career at Lufthansa Airlines in Frankfurt, Germany, and then launched an innovative and successful marketing tech firm in the early 2000s in Silicon Valley. He moved to Chicago in 2006 to lead a highly successful tenure at FCB, increasing its revenue above market growth 10 years in a row and establishing the company as one of the most creatively successful firms globally. His four-year-long leadership at World Business Chicago drove the organization to double in size, enabled more than 400 ProChicago decisions by corporations who relocated and expanded in the region and positioned World Business Chicago as one of the premier economic development organizations in North America.