Who

Paul Lavoie is the co-founder and creative chief of the hip Canadian ad agency Taxi. He oversees the shop's New York office.

Backstory

Quebec City native Lavoie gave design school a stab before dropping out to take a job in advertising. During the late '80s and early '90s, he worked at the Montreal-based firm Cossette where he eventually rose to the position of creative director. When he got tired of life at a larger agency, Lavoie decamped to Toronto and in 1992 partnered with Jane Hope to establish Taxi, a boutique firm that specialized in art and design. The agency was an immediate success and after winning the Canadian Agency of the Year award five times in a row, Lavoie and Hope decided to expand the practice, moving to New York in 2004 to set up Taxi NYC. The agency's pitch: Lavoie says he avoids the bureaucracy of larger firms by sticking to the idea that the team on any account should fit into a taxi. So far that gimmicky approach has landed clients like the hipster mobile service Amp'd, Turner Broadcasting, the Outdoor Life Network, Versus, Killian's, and Molson's, and Lavoie claims that the New York office has already racked up $100 million in billings. These days you'd need a whole lot of taxis to transport the Taxi staff: The agency has about 300 employees on staff, about triple what it had three years ago.

Personal

Lavoie's business partner, Jane Hope, is also his romantic partner. The couple lives in a Greene Street condo they purchased for $1.9 million in 2006.