Hawthorn Group names David Nassar Chief Strategy Officer and EVP
(Alexandria, Virginia) — Former Brookings Institution Vice President David Nassar has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of The Hawthorn Group, effective June 1, where he will oversee business development and will also lead strategy on various client projects. The announcement was made by Hawthorn Chairman John Ashford.
As Vice President for Communications at the Brookings Institution, Nassar served as part of the senior management team at Brookings and reported directly to President Strobe Talbott. While he was there, Brookings was recognized for the innovative work he did to expand Brookings as a media presence.
Nassar dramatically improved the quality of Brookings’ content presentation, grew their audience and improved the quality of engagement with that audience. During his tenure, their social and email following grew by hundreds of thousands and traffic to the website grew by millions. He led partnerships between Brookings and such notable publications as the New York Times and Esquire magazine. He also made landmark videos including a film called “The Life She Deserves” that premiered in Los Angeles at an event cosponsored by Variety Magazine.
Prior to that, David worked in the agency world for his own company and as a senior vice president at Blue State Digital, the firm behind President Obama’s digital organization strategy in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns. David also has a long track record of leading innovative campaigns. He has been credited with putting health care truly on the national presidential campaign stage in New Hampshire in 2004, and with leading efforts to build national grassroots support for health care reform from 2005-2008.
“David brings a track record of more than 20 years of successfully reaching and engaging the public from issue campaigns, to targeted election races, to one of the world’s biggest and most important knowledge brands,” Ashford said. “We value that capacity at Hawthorn and we know our corporate clients do too, which is why we are excited to have David join our team.”
Contact: Suzanne Hammelman, 703-299-4499, [email protected]
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, The Hawthorn Group is an international public affairs firm of senior corporate and political communications experts specializing in building grassroots and grasstops support for issues to achieve public policy objectives. With activities and projects in more than 33 states over the past two years alone, Hawthorn has built campaigns that engage and recruit both grassroots and opinion leader support on issues of broad public concern, including: energy and tax policy, infrastructure programs, business development and resource planning. Hawthorn finds and provides all appropriate means of persuasion, from industry coalitions to individual networking, from traditional advertising to community relations, from media relations to social media, blending all the available tools into the art of advocacy.
