Introduction
The Media Image is proud to announce that Elrize Rossouw has been named Operations Professional of the Year at the 2026 European Agency Awards. This prestige recognizes her pivotal role in orchestrating cross-functional workflow optimizations, pioneering internal automation, and delivering transformative operational efficiency to support TMI’s continued global scaling and sustainable value creation across multi-market agency operations.
About the Award
The European Agency Awards celebrate the continent’s most impactful media, marketing, and technology leaders. The Operations Professional of the Year category honors individuals who demonstrate transformative leadership, driving operational efficiency, process innovation, and infrastructure scalability across complex agency structures.
"Elrize’s progression into an operational leadership role was particularly compelling, showcasing a relentless focus on helping teams work smarter and creating lasting value across the business. The entry provided outstanding evidence of impact, demonstrating how thoughtful process innovation and strong leadership can transform efficiency at scale."
Why She Won — Results at a Glance
- Scalable Workflow Deployment: Reached 69 of 105 agency specialists with structured workflow optimizations, including an 89% adoption rate across Business Operations and 79% rollout across Paid Media.
- Enterprise Infrastructure Adoption: Achieved a 96% company-wide completion rate for Asana Foundations certification, establishing standardized operational execution agency-wide.
- Reporting Efficiency Gains: Reduced weekly reporting production time from 230 minutes down to 45 minutes and monthly reporting from 50 minutes down to 5 minutes, delivering over 22 operational hours saved monthly via automated architectures.
- SEO Content Automation: Cut manual SEO campaign setup time from 43+ hours to 15 minutes for 130 articles while shortening production scheduling from 2 working days to a 4-hour review step.
- AI & Integration Scaling: Engineered and deployed 21 custom AI workflows after auditing 56 internal process automation opportunities.
- Onboarding & Performance Impact: Supported 34 new hires with scalable onboarding systems, achieving an 8.8/10 internal efficiency rating and a 94% reported time-saving impact across teams.
Leadership Perspective
"Operational excellence is the cornerstone of high-performance media execution. Elrize’s recognition highlights her mastery in transforming complex internal workflows into frictionless, scalable infrastructure that empowers our specialists and drives substantive enterprise value across our global footprint"
