Biography
As Senior Vice President of Digital Crisis in Edelman’s Crisis and Issues practice, Aaron serves as a counselor providing guidance to leaders throughout a broad array of industries across the U.S. Aaron’s expertise is the intersection of crisis and digital environments, creating wide-reaching strategies to address issues spanning from viral attacks to cyber breaches.
Prior to Edelman, he served as a Vice President at Dezenhall Resources, a high-stakes communications firm located in Washington, D.C., where he offered counsel on media relations, as well as directed work in public affairs, strategy and issues management, and media training. Aaron’s key clients included leading companies across varied industries.
Before joining Dezenhall, Aaron was a Senior Manager with R3 Consulting. In his role with R3, Aaron served as the senior communications and public affairs counselor to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Undersecretary of Management (USM) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, providing communications counsel to the highest levels of DHS leadership.
Aaron worked as the Director of Public Affairs for The Summit Group, Utah’s largest PR and advertising agency, before joining R3. While there, he managed the public affairs activities for a number of industry leaders such as Wal-Mart, GM and Exxon. Aaron also organized and oversaw a large group of public affairs operatives throughout Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming and Nevada to orchestrate grassroots campaigns for complex legislative issues.
Prior to The Summit Group, Aaron was the press secretary and national spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). His mandate was to assist in rehabilitating the image of FEMA post Hurricane Katrina while serving as a senior counselor to the FEMA Administrator. He also worked closely with White House press secretaries Tony Snow and Dana Perino to communicate the Bush Administration’s messaging related to disaster recovery.