PRWeek Crisis Agency of the Year
Awarded to the firm whose portfolio of crisis engagements the judging panel judged the most consequential of the cycle.
A retained advisory, called when the
stakes exceed internal capacity.
Our Brand Is Crisis is the firm engaged by leadership teams during the seventy-two hours that decide whether a story becomes a footnote or a legacy — and we build the muscle so the next one never catches you flat-footed.
Founded in 2009 by three former senior federal communications officers and a Fortune 50 general counsel, the firm was built for the category of work that does not survive an RFP process.
The four principals had spent two decades inside institutions where a mis-spoken sentence moved markets, shifted regulatory posture, or ended a career. When they left government and corporate practice, they did not start a public relations firm. They opened a small Washington office with a single proposition: when an organization is in the hours of its worst day, it should be able to reach a senior counselor who has already lived through one.
Fifteen years on, that proposition has not changed. The work has expanded across thirty-eight countries and into regulated industries where the cost of an error is measured in fines, license, and trust. London opened in 2014; Singapore in 2019. The bench has grown to one hundred and sixty-seven professionals, forty-seven of whom hold the partnership. What has not grown is the line that no junior staffer is placed on an active engagement. The partner you call is the partner who works the file.
The firm was named for an observation its founders shared over the first week of operation: every organization eventually meets the moment that defines it, and the institutions that survive are those that prepared before the moment arrived.
The Bench
Forty-seven senior partners. Average tenure, eleven years and five months. Industry norm, two years and three.
The people doing the work are the most senior in the field. We present the bench as a roster of disciplines, not a wall of headshots — because in this work, the partner you retain is the one who answers the hotline.
-
I.
Senior Counsel, Reputation & Narrative
Partners who have spent careers inside the institutions their clients now lead — corporate affairs offices, newsrooms, regulator-facing comms desks. They draft the statement that has to hold up to a deposition, not just a news cycle.
-
II.
Crisis & Litigation Communications
Specialists who work the file alongside outside counsel during securities, product-liability, and bet-the-company matters. They speak the language of outside counsel because several of them were outside counsel first.
-
III.
Multilingual Crisis Analysts
Thirty-one analysts across nine working languages, embedded in regional desks that track regulator language, parliamentary questions, and local press patterns in every market where the firm holds retainer.
-
IV.
Hartwell Protocol & Readiness Faculty
The architects and instructors of the Hartwell Crisis Readiness Program, now certified by twenty-two thousand four hundred executives since 2012 and adopted as operating doctrine by fourteen of the top twenty-five global advisory firms.
Independent Recognition
Recognized by the publications and bodies our peers already read.
Holmes Report Global SABRE Award
The SABRE for Crisis Management — the category's highest single honor across the global advisory industry.
PRovoke Media Crisis Consultancy of the Americas
A three-time designation as the leading crisis consultancy across the North and South American markets.
Featured Analysis
The firm's partners and analysts have been invited to contribute analysis to the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the Financial Times.
- Harvard Business Review
- The Economist
- Foreign Affairs
- Financial Times
By the Numbers · 2009 — 2024
Fifteen years of retained counsel, recorded in figures a careful reader would want to see.
1,340+
Cumulative crisis engagements managed since founding.
96%
Year-over-year client renewal rate across the active retainer portfolio.
84
Corporations on active retainer, alongside twelve sovereign entities and six multilateral institutions.
22,400+
Executives certified through the Hartwell Crisis Readiness Program since 2012.
Nine minutes. The maximum elapsed time from hotline activation to a sitting senior partner on a confidential call — twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Counsel-to-Counsel
If the situation is forming, the call should be made.
A confidential thirty-minute briefing with a senior partner. No deck, no pitch — a working conversation between counselors who have stood in rooms like yours. The line is staffed by a partner, not a switchboard.
Confidentiality is assured. No file is opened. No record is kept of the first conversation.