PRovoke Global 2023

Rohit Bhargava

Founder, Non-Obvious Company

Rohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world. He is the 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of eight books and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends, innovation and marketing in the world. Rohit has been invited to deliver sold-out keynotes and workshops in 32 countries around the world to change the way teams and leaders think at the World Bank, NASA, Intel, LinkedIn, MetLife, Under Armour, Univision, Disney and hundreds of other well-known organizations. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur and founding two companies, he previously spent 15 years as a marketing strategist at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett where he advised global brands on marketing and storytelling strategy. Outside his speaking and consulting, Rohit has taught persuasive speaking and global marketing as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, is frequently quoted in the global media and writes a monthly column on trends for GQ magazine in Brazil. Rohit lives in the Washington DC area with his wife and is a proud dad of two boys. He loves the Olympics (he’s been to five!) and actively hates cauliflower. 

Brakkton Booker

Political Correspondent, Politico

Reporter based in Washington, D.C. covering federal social safety net programs and breaking news around the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. He also regularly deploys to cover natural disasters as well as monitors trends in regional politics, particularly on issues of guns and race. Booker has previously worked at NPR and WAMU and is a proud Howard University alum. In his free time, he enjoys golfing and is an expert lover of fine whiskey.

Martha Boudreau

EVP, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer, AARP

Candace Bushnell

Journalist and author, Sex and the City

From Sex and the City through ten successive novels, Bushnell has revealed a gift for tapping into the zeitgeist of any New York minute. With each book, she has deepened her range, but with a light touch that makes her complex literary accomplishments look easy. The Guardian Newspaper sums up Bushnell’s work this way: “She caustically addresses the conditions of materialism, cramped urban life, and metropolitan speed, where fame and wealth are all around, but never in one’s grasp . . . . Bushnell is courageous in bringing this to the fore, and she is blessed with an Austen-like mastery in doing so. She cuts through the lies that women tell themselves about the surface equality of Western society. As such, she has much more in common with Edith Wharton, Dorothy Parker and early Bret Easton Ellis.”

Bushnell (b. Dec. 1, 1958) grew up in Glastonbury, Ct, and moved to New York City at age 19. She attended Rice University and New York University, and began her professional career at 19 when she wrote a children’s book for Simon & Schuster. Throughout her twenties, Bushnell developed her trademark style as a freelancer, writing darkly humorous pieces about women, relationships and dating for Mademoiselle, Self Magazine, and Esquire.

In 1990, she wrote a column that would become a precursor for Sex and the City, called The Human Cartoon, a fictional serial published in Hamptons Magazine.

She began writing for the New York Observer in 1993; in November of 1994 she created the column Sex and the City, which ran in the New York Observer for two years. The column was bought as a book in 1995, and sold to HBO as a series in 1996. Bushnell hosted a radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio, called Sex, Success, and Sensibility, which aired from October 2006 to October 2008. She wrote and created a web series, The Broadroom, starring Jennie Garth, which launched in September 2009.

Through her books and television series, Bushnell’s work has influenced and defined two generations of women. She is the winner of the 2006 Matrix Award for books (other winners include Joan Didion and Amy Tan), and a recipient of the Albert Einstein Spirit of Achievement Award. She currently divides her time between New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.

Corey duBrowa

CEO, BCW

In addition to serving as CEO of BCW, one of the world’s largest communications agencies with more than 4,000 people globally, Corey also oversees AxiCom, a specialist technology PR agency; Direct Impact, a grassroots and advocacy agency; GCI Health, a global healthcare integrated communications agency; HZ, an integrated creative agency; and Prime Policy Group, a public affairs and public policy consultancy. He is also a member of the WPP Executive Committee.

Before joining BCW in August of 2023, Corey served for five years as Vice President of Global Communications and Public Affairs at Google and Alphabet. Prior to that he was Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Salesforce, and previously spent seven years at Starbucks as Senior Vice President of Global Communications. He has extensive agency experience from his time at Waggener Edstrom and Ketchum Public Relations, having begun his career in employee communications at Nike.

His multiple industry awards over the past 25 years include six SABREs, four PRWeek Global Awards and three PRSA Silver Anvils, and he has been inducted into the PR News Hall of Fame. He currently serves on the University of Oregon Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the PR Museum’s Board of Trustees. He was a trustee of the Arthur W. Page Society for five years and a founding member of the USC Annenberg School’s Board of Advisors. Corey was a music journalist for two decades, with more than a thousand bylines in publications ranging from Rolling Stone to GQ.

Ashley Etienne

Senior advisor, Powell Tate, Former senior advisor to Presidents Obama and Biden, and Vice President Harris

Widely recognized as the “queen of the war room” and “Obama’s bad-news fixer,” Ashley Etienne is among the nation’s most accomplished communications strategist who possess an unparalleled experience and insights into the White House, Congress, and the policies driving the national agenda. She has served as a trusted senior advisor to our nation’s most powerful leaders: Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

For more than 15 years, Etienne has specialized in facilitating high-stakes communications strategies to address the most pressing policy, economic, and social issues facing the nation. Her mastery of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, expansive media relationships and access to power-players across industries and advocacy make her an asset in mission critical settings.

Ashley most recently served as Deputy Assistant to President Biden and Communications Director for Vice President Harris. Before returning to the White House, she served on the Presidential Transition Team as the Director of Communications for Vice President Elect Kamala Harris and as Senior Advisor for Strategic Planning for Biden for President in 2020.

From 2017 to 2020, Ashley served as Communications Director and Senior Advisor to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman and person of color to hold the position. There she led the integrated communications and legal strategy for the first impeachment and trial of President Trump and the communication strategy that resulted in the historic 2018 midterm victory for House Democrats and reelection of Pelosi as Speaker. 

Etienne was appointed Special Assistant to President Obama and Communications Director for the U.S. Cabinet in 2014 and led strategic communications for the President’s signature My Brother’s Keeper initiative.

Prior to joining the Obama White House, Etienne held several positions in Congress including Deputy Communications Director for Leader Pelosi and Communications Director for the Oversight Committee under Ranking Member Elijah Cummings.

Etienne joined The Weber Shandwick Collective in 2022 as a senior advisor where she counsels top executives on navigating disruption in politics, business, and society. She is a CBS News Political Contributor and served as a Spring 2022 Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service. Etienne holds a Master of Arts in Political Communications from John Hopkins University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Sam Houston State University.

Gail Heimann

CEO, The Weber Shandwick Collective

Gail Heimann is Chief Executive Officer of Weber Shandwick and oversees The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC), the leading earned-first network – a strategic communications and consulting powerhouse built for “the era of earned.”

TWSC is fueled by a breadth and depth of sector and service expertise across 12 brands with offices in 6 continents. Its wide range of proficiency spans from organizational transformation to public affairs to digital transformation. Gail is dedicated to continuing to build a global organization differentiated by the power of its specialist expertise, its commitment and willingness to innovate and its culture of collaboration. 

As CEO, Gail elevates and accelerates the kind of big picture, convention-breaking thinking that drives action – love, loyalty, awe, advocacy – and earns enduring change. At her core, she’s an idea maker and future shaper with a relentless drive to discover the new and the next. Throughout her storied career, Gail has helped to build brands and burnish reputations for a significant percentage of the Fortune 500 and has worked on iconic brands and campaigns across every sector. 

Gail was a catalyst in Weber Shandwick being named as the only PR agency to the prestigious Ad Age Agency A-List in 2014, 2015 and 2020, and featured as an A-List “Standout” Agency in 2017 and 2018. Ad Age also named Weber Shandwick to its Best Places to Work list in 2019. Weber Shandwick was also honored as PRWeek’s Global Agency of the Year four years in a row (2015 to 2018) and was awarded PRWeek’s Purpose Agency of the Year in 2020 and 2021. Additional accolades include PRovoke‘s Global Agency of the Year in 2015, 2017 and 2019 – and PRovoke Global Agency of the Decade in 2020.

Under Gail’s leadership, Weber Shandwick has won 150+ Cannes Lions in partnership with leading brands around the world. Gail has served on five juries at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: President of the Public Relations jury in 2012 and 2021; a member of the inaugural jury for the Glass Lions, which celebrate work that breaks through gender bias and stereotypes, in 2014; a member of the Cannes Lions Titanium jury in 2018 and a member of the Young Lions jury in 2022.

In 2020, Gail was named the PR Agency Head winner in Campaign’s inaugural U.S. Agency of the Year awards. In 2019, she was honored twice by PRWeek as U.S. Agency Professional of the Year and Global Agency Professional of the Year. In 2016, she was inducted into PRWeek’s inaugural Hall of Femme (now Women of Distinction), recognizing female trailblazers in communications. And in 2015, Gail was named to PRovoke’s North America Innovator 25 list, which celebrates individuals who accelerate innovation and push boundaries within the public relations industry. Earlier in her career, Gail was named an Ad Age Woman to Watch. 

Gail sits on the Board of Directors for the Susan G. Komen organization, The LAGRANT Foundation and Ad Council.  

Gail and her husband have two daughters and live in New York City.

John Saunders

President & CEO, FleishmanHillard

John Saunders has been FleishmanHillard’s President and Chief Executive Officer since November 2015 – only the fourth individual to hold that title in the history of a firm approaching eight decades.

From 2011, he was Regional President for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He was previously Regional President for Continental Europe and Eurasia, having been named as Regional Director for Europe in 2004. Before assuming his regional leadership positions, John was Managing Director at FleishmanHillard Saunders. He founded that business in 1990 and grew it into Ireland’s largest public relations consultancy and one of FleishmanHillard’s most successful international offices before selling it to Omnicom in 2001.

John is a member of a range of professional bodies, including the Arthur W. Page Society and The Seminar, and is regularly invited to share a perspective on communications-related topics at engagements around the world. He is also a Trustee of the world-renowned Missouri Botanical Garden and serves on the Board of Greater St. Louis, Inc.

He has received numerous accolades, including a 2023 Individual Achievement SABRE from PRovoke and was named the 16^th inductee to the ICCO Hall of Fame.

Nick Thompson

CEO, The Atlantic

Nicholas Thompson has occupied the most prestigious positions in the world of tech writing and journalism—staking out a bold, optimistic vision for what our future will look like. Nicholas currently serves as CEO of The Atlantic, leading the team to National Magazine Award wins for unprecedented coverage of the Covid-19 Pandemic, new perspectives on 9/11, the rise of global autocratic power; the case to return the national parks to Native American tribes; and the hypocrisy behind high-class education in America. His years of experience covering tech makes him a leading analytical voice in the field, where he uncovers how each new development in the world of tech will impact us all.

How will the world’s dominant tech corporations—Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft—interact with citizens, help write policy, and redefine privacy and security? How will artificial intelligence and robotics change our devices, the way we work, earn a living, fight wars, solve problems—our very selves? No matter the subject—design, culture, media, tech, ethics, or our digital future—he’s more than ready to break the news with big ideas and fearless takes.

As the Editor-in-Chief of WIRED, Nicholas broke massive stories about Facebook’s hidden flaws, cyber-warfare, the Robert Mueller investigation, and numerous other topics. His ground-breaking investigative reporting on Facebook was a finalist for a 2020 Loeb Award, and he oversaw work that won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Magazine Award, and has even led to Oscar-winning films.

At The New Yorker, Nicholas served as editor of the magazine’s digital platforms, breaking new ground with stories about his friendship with Joseph Stalin’s daughter, how our lives are forever changed by the consumer drone industry, and arson amid the election cycle. His work at The New Yorker is defined by his fearless leadership and unwavering commitment to quality stories: The main strategy for growing audience is to publish more, better stories. The stories we’re prouder of, the stories we put more effort into, attract more readers.

He’s also the author of the critically acclaimed biography The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War—a fascinating double biography that follows two rivals and friends from the beginning of the Cold War to its end. The New York Times said that the book was “brimming with fascinating revelations about the men and the harrowing events they steered through.”

Nicholas is a former Senior Editor at Legal Affairs and a former contributor at CBS. With a massive and vigilant following on social media, he’s one of LinkedIn’s most-followed individuals. He earned the 21st Century Leader Award from The National Committee on American Foreign Policy, was a Future Tense Fellow at the New America Foundation and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Nicholas is also an accomplished runner and is currently the American record holder for men over age 45 in the 50k. He is also ranked in the top ten marathoners in the world for his age group. He can show you how the lessons he’s learned from running are also applicable to business, and every other field. The discipline and grit put into this solo sport is undeniably influential on productivity, creativity and purpose. To Nicholas, running is not a matter of physical talent, but a matter of mental strength.

Melissa Waggener Zorkin

Global CEO and Founder, WE Communications