We recently published our annual list of the Top Women Driving Growth in Out-of-Home (OOH) for 2025. Today, we are highlighting Stacy Liang, West Coast Sales Director, Orange Barrel Media.
Stacy Liang, is the Senior Director of Sales (West Coast) at Orange Barrel Media/IKE Smart City. She has been in the OOH industry for over 13 years, with half of that time on the agency side working on various accounts such as Warner Bros, Apple, CBS, Levis and Activision. Stacy has taken her experience on the agency side along with her ability to thrive in fast paced environments into establishing & growing OBM/IKE’s presence on the west coast.
Stacy has been involved with The Birthday Party Project for the past seven years, where she throws monthly birthday parties for children experiencing transitional living. She has recently been appointed to Board Member and threw a massive birthday bash for 150 families affected by the Los Angeles fires.
Stacy received her BS in Business Management from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo.
When Stacy first moved to Los Angeles, she didn’t have a car. She would walk to her internship every day. On these walks, she started paying attention to OOH, especially for upcoming films. Several months later she was referred to an interview at Outdoor Media Group where she joined the team responsible for Warner Bros OOH.
Success Through Struggles
Coming from the agency side, Stacy saw how OOH had to fight for every sliver of the media budget.
“I’m empathetic to our agency partners and the struggles they are up against and I want to be a resource for them,” Stacy said.
She aims to be an extension of her company’s partners’ teams to help provide them wtih all the tools they need to create larger, more impactful OOH campaigns.
Working on the agency-side, she was used to working in a building with hundreds of colleages and having a massive, global network that she could reach out to for anything from collaborating on a client project or out of just general curiousity on what their side of the business did.
When she onboarded to OBM/IKE, she was the only employee on the West Coast and the company had only about 60 employees at that time.
“I was nervous I’d feel isolated and my network would shrink,” Stacy said. “However, I took it upon myself to be more proactive on reaching out and expanding my network.”
“I was nervous I’d feel isolated and my network would shrink,” Stacy said. “However, I took it upon myself to be more proactive on reaching out and expanding my network.”
She attended more conferences and events. She would regularly fly to OBM/IKE HQ in Columbus. She would chat up her WeWork neighbors.
“I fearlessly put myself out there!” Stacy said.
Through her career, she has worked on many campaigns, but her personal all-time favorite OOH campaign is an oldie, but a goodie! They did a bulletin blowout for WB’s The Dark Knight Rises.
“This campaign really led the charge in utilizing OOH in an innovative, fresh, and contextually relevant way!” Stacy said.
Women Need to Continue to Advocate for Themselves
Any ecosystem greatly benefits where there are a multitude of diverse backgrounds present, that way there are various perspectives that can be contribute to a new way of doing, Stacy says. She says that this is applicable to more than just gender, but also to workplace, education, cultural experiences and more.
She feels women can change the industry by just being their authentic self while advocating for not only themselves but their fellow colleagues.
“Until there is a more equal share of women in leadership positions across the industry, women will have to continue to advocate for themselves & their fellow colleagues,” Stacy said. “I would encourage women to identify their natural born abilities/skills and build upon that so that they can continue to grow and eventually lead in an authentic way. We don’t have to lead like men in order to succeed.”
“Until there is a more equal share of women in leadership positions across the industry, women will have to continue to advocate for themselves & their fellow colleagues,” Stacy said. “I would encourage women to identify their natural born abilities/skills and build upon that so that they can continue to grow and eventually lead in an authentic way. We don’t have to lead like men in order to succeed.”
She also suggests identifying several women in the industry that you admire and reaching out to them for 1:1 time to pick their brains. She feels lucky that at her first OOH job, Kim Aviles was the Director on her team.
“I really looked at her as a role model. She handled every situation, no matter if it was challenging or unprecedented, with such confidence & ease – it made me feel that one day I could step into a leadership position as well,” Stacy said.
To get more women into positions of executive leadership in OOH, Stacy says we will need champions in current leadership positions to create opportunity, including men.
Inclusivity must be done in an authentic way. She has seen over the past several years that a lot of corporations have taken the stance on DEI as more of a trend. They promote it when it’s beneficial, and pull away from it when it’s beneficial.
“I am so proud to be part of OBM/IKE where diversity has been part of our origin story and is weaved into our DNA. We never felt the need to accelerate or create a specific taskforce for this because it is genuinely who we are and because of that, we authentically attract team members that want to be a part of this organization,” Stacy said.
“I am so proud to be part of OBM/IKE where diversity has been part of our origin story and is weaved into our DNA. We never felt the need to accelerate or create a specific taskforce for this because it is genuinely who we are and because of that, we authentically attract team members that want to be a part of this organization,” Stacy said.
The Future of OOH – Pushing the Envelope
Historically, OOH is a great platform for creativity & innovation. But Stacy believes in order to continue this legacy, we need to push the envelope on what can be done.
“This takes great collaboration & effort between vendor, agency, client & creative teams. How often does an amazing idea get killed because one of the parties says no? We need to make space for out-of-the-box thinking not only when it comes to the creative concept but also in execution!” Stacy said.
“This takes great collaboration & effort between vendor, agency, client & creative teams. How often does an amazing idea get killed because one of the parties says no? We need to make space for out-of-the-box thinking not only when it comes to the creative concept but also in execution!” Stacy said.
Along with our historical strengths, Stacy says we need to continue to progress in our research & data in order to show value in not only increase the current budgets but attract new business to the medium.