Rowena Bhagchandani enters a conversation all in. Warm, funny and open, she has the energy of someone who feels people quickly: who is in the room, what they bring, and what might become possible together. Ask her to introduce herself and the many hats arrive with a laugh. Founder and CEO of BLKJ Havas. President of the Advertising and Marketing Association of Singapore. Founding board member of the IAA. University advisory board member.
Rowena has always lived close to change. She grew up in Singapore, in a family of entrepreneurs, in a country whose own story is one of accelerated transformation. So when she thinks about making a mark, she goes straight to responsibility: the responsibility to keep driving change, to inspire people, to run organisations with intention, and to help others grow.
That instinct shaped one of the biggest decisions of her career. Rowena was Managing Director at DDB, leading a large agency team, when she chose to step out and build BLKJ, now BLKJ Havas, from scratch.
When she looks back on that decision, she talks about courage, but never as a solo act. Starting BLKJ required bravery, but it also required support: the people beside her, the partners willing to build with her, and the belief that discomfort could become a way forward.
It’s not just about the bravery. It’s about the power you get from having so many people supporting you.
That belief was tested again during Covid. BLKJ had grown, and the work was strong, but Rowena and her partners could see that if they wanted to move beyond Singapore, they had to choose discomfort again. Joining the Havas network gave them what she describes as the best of Singapore, together with access to a wider world.
You get a sense of Rowena’s brand of leadership when she talks about pitching. She loves the moment when a team walks into a room and the work begins to carry itself. In a recent pitch for the Singapore Tourism Board account, BLKJ Havas was the “dark horse” up against some of the biggest agencies in the business.
Rowena speaks about pitch chemistry almost as something physical. Preparation matters, but so does trust: knowing who should step forward, who should hold the space, and when the idea is ready to land. The strength of the pitch is carried by everything around it: the ease between people, the banter, the timing, and the confidence that comes when a team believes in the work together. When the pitch lets the client experience that chemistry, Rowena feels most powerful in her craft.
The collective we is so much more powerful than ‘I’.
For Rowena, the strongest work begins when a brand notices something true about people’s lives. One campaign she returns to is Great Eastern’s annual women’s run. The team built the work around something they had seen again and again in women’s lives: the habit of putting themselves last. Insurance for the husband first. Care for the children first. Everyone else’s needs made urgent before their own health, wealth or future.
The campaign mattered because it gave language to a pattern many women recognised immediately. It resonated across generations. Older women recognised it from inside their own lives, from years of postponing themselves while caring for others. Younger women responded with a different kind of energy: a readiness to claim space for themselves sooner.
That question of women claiming space carries into what Rowena hopes HerMark will make visible. At the start of many careers, she has seen women present in equal numbers. Then, somewhere along the way, the balance shifts. Life pulls in different directions, and structures do not always make room for the range women need to accommodate in their lives.
I would love for more women to rise up and be able to step up and be driving the change.
This is where Rowena’s belief in the “collective we” becomes a way of answering the imbalance in the world. It is a responsibility to give women the chance to show up. Give them the leg up. Make the hard parts feel less lonely. Let them see that they can begin before they feel completely ready.
She sees women as often already “T-shaped” talents: people with depth, but also range. They know how to hold a specific skill deeply while also reading the wider room, managing complexity and adapting quickly when circumstances change. That breadth is often treated as fragmentation, but Rowena sees it as strength. In an industry being reshaped by technology, new business models and shifting expectations of creativity itself, she wants more women to recognise that range as power.
Her advice to women still finding their voice is to treat discovery as part of the work. The old ladder no longer feels like the only path. A young account director might also be an influencer, a founder, a collaborator, a community builder. A side project may become part of the next chapter.
Her own relationship with her inner voice changed when she stopped calling things mistakes and began calling them learnings. The shift gave experience back to her as something useful, rather than something to carry as evidence against herself.
That belief has been shaped as much by family as by industry. She is inspired by her aunt, who left Hong Kong for New York and built a life there over fifty years. She thinks of her mother, who became an entrepreneur later in life and still comes home from technology classes with something new to teach her. In different ways, both women showed her that reinvention does not belong only to the young, and courage does not always announce itself before it acts.
And then there are her daughters.
Single mum to two daughters, Rowena describes them as moving through the world with positivity, optimism and a willingness to try. They seem less burdened by the old fear of getting it wrong, more ready to follow curiosity where it leads. The world Rowena wants for them is the world she is trying to build everywhere else: one where women can dream bigger, try more, recover faster, and grow into the fullest version of themselves.
For her mark, Rowena does not overcomplicate it: A heart.
Everyone who knows her, she says, will tell you she is “what you see is what you get.” She is all in. Her warmth is immediate, but it is also active. It builds teams, gives chances, makes space for people’s passions, and helps others feel brave enough to try.
It is a fitting mark for someone whose career has been shaped by courage, change and the collective power of people moving forward together. The kind of mark that makes other people feel they can begin.
HerMark is a visual and narrative study of women shaping the marketing, advertising, and communications industry. Branding in Asia is publishing the ongoing series in partnership with HerMark.
Learn more at hermark.world and see the rest of the series here.
