Lauren Richards, CEO of Starcom Mediavest Group Canada, is resigning.

Internal sources confirmed that Richards made the announcement to staff end-of-day Wednesday. Though she is taking another job, no information on the destination was available at press time.

Richards was named Media Director of the Year in 2009 by MiC‘s sister publication, strategy, and the agency was named strategy‘s Media Agency of the Year in 2008 and 2009. The agency also collected domestic and international awards for its work for Johnnie Walker, Pogo, Oreo, Nintendo and others.

Richards joined Starcom MediaVest Group Canada in 2006 after spending close to 20 years at Cossette Media, where she worked with clients including Bell, McDonald’s, Nike and Coca-Cola, driving the agency into The Gunn Report for Media Creativity – the only Canadian media group to be ranked at that time.

She was also chair of the SMG Global Product team, which identified the best work from countries in the network to put forward for awards, and was the first Canadian judge on the Media jury at Cannes.

At home, she developed several domestic awards programs including Young Media Challenge and the Globe and Mail Young Lions Challenge.

With files from strategy magazine