When former Havas Lynx CEO Dave Hunt started to assemble a team at his new agency, The Considered, one of the first people to whom he reached out was Shafi Ahmed. A professor, surgeon and entrepreneur, Ahmed was the first surgical instructor to stream a live operation to 14,000 students around the world using Google Glass.

That’s precisely the type of tech-mindedness Hunt hopes will distinguish his new organization from the tens of others espousing a similar future-forward philosophy.

“It represented an incredible, transformational delivery of medical education that was breaking rules,” Hunt explained. “What I’ve tried to do is establish a team that doesn’t just talk about change, tech and innovation, but actually has a track record for delivering meaningful campaigns and meaningful change.”

That thinking informed the agency’s official launch, which involved the creation of a pharma community on Clubhouse known as Health.Reconsidered. Hunt characterizes Clubhouse as a “brilliant vehicle to democratize conversation” and one that fosters engagement, empathy and community among the group’s 2,000 members.

“For our launch, we used platforms like Fiver and organized Zoom events as a proof point,” Hunt explained. “It just demonstrates that we haven’t followed the formula. We come at this with a very fresh approach – new ways of doing things, new ways of engaging.”

At Havas Lynx, Hunt grew the company’s footprint to 400 employees and helped run major efforts on behalf of pharma A-listers like AstraZeneca and Novartis. But he admits that today’s healthcare marketing landscape is vastly different from the pre-pandemic days of in-person engagement. To that point, The Considered will focus on a hybrid model of delivering healthcare marketing.

“I absolutely believe that the hybrid world is here to stay,” Hunt stressed. “The idea of going back to the same level of physical engagement is, to me, crazy. There’s a better world that combines both physical and virtual engagement.”

Hunt similarly plans for The Considered to approach diversity, equity and inclusion in a much more thoughtful manner. “The thing I’m striving for is to make sure that people don’t all come from the same place – that they didn’t all go to the same school and that they don’t eat at the same restaurants,” he said. “I’m desperate to be working with and speaking with people who I don’t really understand, who I don’t really know, who have a very different point of view from my own.”

That’s why he has tapped well-regarded industry veteran Aurora Archer, founder and CEO of marketing consultancy Bellatrix Group, to spearhead the agency’s DE&I efforts.

“She’s a mentor to me and she’s going to help us drive our culture, our inclusivity and our community, to allow us to really unlock the potential creative benefit of different people with different backgrounds and perspectives,” Hunt said. “It’s a big statement for us to be working closely day-to-day with Aurora as a partner, and set out with a top-down approach of creating the most diverse and inclusive community.”