The top 36 public relations pros in the tech industry
- Tech companies rely on public relations professionals to tamp down on crises of all sizes and scope.
- Business Insider identified 36 of the top PR tech pros at agencies, tech startups, and multi-billion dollar corporations.
- They include well-known PR chiefs like Google's Corey duBrowa, up and comers like Pinterest's Elizabeth Luke, and venture capital spinners like William Nevius.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Tech companies are often in the news, whether it's because of new innovations they're pitching or concerns about their impact on society that have landed many of them in the political hot seat.
These companies rely on public relations professionals to gain awareness of and favor for their products and show how they're responding to issues like unsavory content on their platforms, antitrust concerns, and job losses as a result of automation.
Business Insider identified 36 of the top PR pros in tech today through a combination of original reporting and nominations.
We also considered the views of journalists who are on the receiving end of their pitches and can be a tough bunch to please.
The list, in alphabetical order by last name, includes up-and-coming crisis pros, agency owners, venture capital spinners, and PR chiefs in charge of working on the brands of multibillion corporations.
Kyle Arteaga, CEO, The Bulleit Group
Since launching The Bulleit Group in 2012, Arteaga has built the agency into a $6 million agency with three dozen employees.
The agency has won a number of high-profile accounts, including Thor Trucks, Zoox, Google, Gradient Ventures, LinkedIn, and P&G Ventures.
But it's Arteaga's moves into the auto and transportation industry that particularly impressed one journalist.
"From the launch of Thor Trucks (electric semi competing with Tesla), EV and AV perception software, and working with Zoox (purpose-built self-driving company recently acquired by Amazon) they've shown they understand the increasingly intertwined nature of automotive and technology brands," the journalist said.
Morgan Borer, head of media relations, Bevel
Borer was Bevel's first employee when it launched in 2017 and has been instrumental to its growth to 18 employees and win client wins like Alan Patricof and his firm, Greycroft.
Borer helped get coverage for Patricof's Primetime Partners, a venture capital firm focused on companies founded by older entrepreneurs, in The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and other outlets.
Borer also handled PR for crypto firm Tagomi when it was acquired by Coinbase; Coca-Cola's investment in Dirty Lemon; and Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian's investment in Rally.
Brandon Borrman, VP of communications, Twitter
As political tensions flared up during the summer of 2020 in the US, it fell to Borrman to explain Twitter's decisions like removing tweets from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump about breaking social distancing practices.
These decisions have stirred up a debate on free speech and censorship — issues that will continue to plague the social media company as it braces for regulation.
Borrman is not new to fraught territory, having coached CEO Jack Dorsey on his 2018 testimony in front of Congress that the AP to call him "unflappable."
He also leads PR for Twitter's support for an Open Internet, an initiative to promote competition online.
Kelly Boynton, communications lead, Gusto
At the human resources platform startup, Boynton has focused on the small businesses it serves and the relief they need in the pandemic, leading to coverage in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Bloomberg.
Journalists praised her for her work on IPOs for high-growth companies like DocuSign's listing on Nasdaq, which raised $629 million in 2018, one calling her a "consummate pro."
Another said she's "knowledgeable, prompt, and zero-bullshit" and "gotten me to pay more attention to the company."
Earlier, she spun for clients like Facebook, Intuit, and Hootsuite at Access Communications.
Allison Braley, operating partner of marketing and communications, Playground Global
Braley runs PR for Playground Global, a 36-person venture capital firm with $825 million in assets under management; and many of its portfolio companies, which include Relativity Space and Virta.
Braley joined the firm after founder Andy Rubin, a Google executive who had faced sexual harassment accusations, exited.
Earlier, she worked at Canvas, a Ford-owned vehicle leasing company; and Fair, which acquired Canvas.
At Zoosk, she oversaw PR through a failed IPO attempt and CEO transition. She also led marketing for The Information, where she helped get the word out about the business news startup.
Crystal Braswell, head of engineering and diversity and inclusion communications, LinkedIn
Braswell and her team have been getting out the word about the networking platform's efforts to fix gender and racial gaps, leading to a story in The Wall Street Journal about LinkedIn's new software to spot biases in algorithms.
Braswell also leads the diversity and inclusion communications team and its cultures programs, helpong promote its reputation as an employer in outlets like CNBC.
Earlier at LinkedIn, Braswell helped promote its higher education products and the redesign of its feed.
Jay Carney, SVP of global corporate affairs, Amazon
Carney served President Barack Obama as White House Press Secretary for three years. His political controvery wrangling skills have served him at Amazon, where he arrived in 2015.
Congressional and public scrutiny of the sprawling tech giant has grown as it expands into new businesses, and Carney has fought for public favor with news outlets and politicians as Amazon tries to stave off regulation around worker pay and antitrust issues.
J.J. Colao, founder and CEO, Haymaker Group
Colao's Haymaker Group, which was founded in 2014, has become a go-to firm for startups like Handy and Drift and more established players like Etsy and Zocdoc.
He has an extensive network of journalists, organizing events for the 1,300-member New York Media Meetup. He also runs a bi-monthly dinner with Jon Fine and Laurel Touby for founders, journalists, and investors.
Colao knows firsthand what a good story pitch is; he used to be a reporter at Forbes, which named his feature on Evan Spiegel that revealed the Snap founder turned down a $3 billion cash offer from Facebook one of its best stories of the decade.
Chantelle Darby, VP of communications, Accel
Silicon Valley vet Darby got her big break helping manage Yelp's $1.47 billion IPO in 2012.
Today, Darby helps oversee communications at one of the biggest venture capital firms, Accel, whose investments included Atlassian, Crowdstrike, Facebook, and Jet.
One tech journalist said Darby "does a great job of helping me understand what [Accel's companies] do and why it matters," getting interviews and information in a "very timely manner."
Between Accel and Yelp, Darby did PR for startups and helped launch Sheryl Sandberg's book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead."
Raman Deol, corporate communications lead, Flexport
At Flexport, a logistics startup, Deol has promoted the company's efforts to help with pandemic relief like distributing supplies to frontline responders.
Her work has helped land Susan Schöenberg, VP of impact and general manager, on Fortune's 40 under 40 technology list and a profile of CEO Ryan Petersen in TechCrunch.
Her previous posts include video chat app Houseparty; and OutCast, where she promoted GitHub's Series C funding and the launch of the Oculus Rift.
Corey duBrowa, VP of global communications and public affairs, Google
DuBrowa leads communications and public affairs at the tech giant.
While there, he's handled controversies around its Pentagon work, an employee walkout, and a censored search engine in China that it ultimately scrapped.
During his tenure, he's also whittled down Google's hundreds of agency relationships, tamped down on leaks, and helped prep CEO Sundar Pichai to testify on Capitol Hill.
Alan Dunton, managing director of the West Coast, Shift Communications
Dunton has helped launch a number of firsts in consumer and enterprise tech: HP's printer-faxer-scanner, SCio's first handheld spectrometer, the first language translation service for Babel Fish, and one of the first MP3 players for Diamond Multimedia.
Today, he's focused on emerging tech like autonomous mobility, the industrial Internet of Things, and digital transformation.
Between 2018 and 2020, Dunton helped win 20 new business accounts like Evite and TELUS International.
Prior to Shift, Dunton worked at Grayling, TriplePoint, Bigpoint, and other agencies.
Caitlin Epstein, director of PR, Twilio
Epstein has had a full plate, explaining how the developer Twilio has shifted its business focus to take on giants like Salesforce and Adobe.
In 2019, she handled press for its $3 billion acquisition of SendGrid, and its pivot to customer engagement.
She also helped get coverage for CEO Jeff Lawson as an ethical leader and managed communications after he criticized the Trump administration's child separation policy.
Phil Gomes, chief communications and marketing officer, Bloq
In PR, Gomes is an expert when it comes to blockchain technology.
At Bloq, Gomes helped reposition the company from a venture studio to one focused on providing blockchain infrastructure.
His focus on emerging technologies goes back to his days at Edelman, where he worked for more than a decade. There, he helped set up rules to use Wikipedia as PR agencies attracted scrutiny over their edits to the website's pages.
Jill Hazelbaker, SVP of marketing and public affairs, Uber
Like other fixers, Hazelbaker is a former politico-turned-marketing executive who served on Senator John McCain's 2008 campaign before having stints at Snap and Google.
At Uber, Hazelbaker confronted the ride-hailing giant's cultural issues like sexual harassment and gender discrimination by encouraging the company to publish a safety report in 2019 to show Uber was going to be more transparent with the press.
She was also among execs who called on embattled former CEO Travis Kalanick to resign.
Julie Henderson, chief communications officer, Snap
Henderson has changed public perception of the beleaguered social media company, leading to coverage about how CEO Evan Spiegel has matured and Snap being named "the most innovative company of 2020" by Fast Company.
Henderson also spread findings of a report on Gen Z's mental health issues, which led to Snap's product team developing an app with Headspace that allows users to share meditation sessions on its platform.
Before Snap, Henderson was chief communications officer at 21st Century Fox.
Toni Iafrate, VP of global communications, UiPath
With many workers worrying about automation taking their jobs, Iafrate has her work cut out for her at UiPath, which creates bots to do repetitive tasks.
The company has scored coverage in The New York Times, which reported it is "freeing workers from drudgery far more often than it is eliminating jobs," along with Forbes and The Wall Street Journal.
Iafrate has a long history of working for enterprise tech companies including Logmein, Qlick technologies, Cognos Corporation, and Newmediary.
Liz Jarvis-Shean, VP of communications and policy, DoorDash
After working on both President Obama's campaigns and in the White House, Jarvis-Shean jumped to the tech sector, working for companies like Tesla, Civis Analytics, Nuna, and Airbnb.
At DoorDash, she works with CEO Tony Xu as the delivery app company benefits from a pandemic boom and prepares for an IPO.
She worked behind the scenes to help delivery companies win a California measure called Prop 22 in 2020 to have drivers classified as contractors instead of employees.
Dustee Jenkins, global head of communications and PR, Spotify
Jenkins was behind several efforts that bolstered Spotify's stock price by focusing on efforts to grow its advertising business, users, and subscriptions.
As competition has tightened in the music-streaming industry, Jenkins helped promote Spotify's podcast deals with personalities like Joe Rogan, Amy Schumer, and Jemele Hill.
She also pitched Spotify to Wall Street when the company took an unusual path to going public by listing directly without offering new shares.
Earlier, she had roles at Target and Public Strategies.
Michael Kaye, global communications and PR manager, OkCupid
Kaye was the only PR person at OkCupid when he joined in 2019, and he's been busy — it's gotten more than 100 articles about dating during the pandemic in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
He also spread the word about OkCupid's new gender pronouns feature and spearheads OkCupid's relationships with nonprofits like the Human Rights Campaign and NAACP.
Kaye previously worked at Edelman, RF Binder, and Ruder Finn.
Katy Kenealy, SVP, Method Communications
Kenealy oversees some of tech PR agency Method Communications' biggest clients, like Domo, Vivint Smart Home, and Workplace from Facebook account teams.
When digital operations management platform PagerDuty prepared to go public, Kenealy drummed up enthusiasm in the press, helping get coverage in places like Fortune. Eventually, PagerDuty raised more than $200 million.
More recently, Kenealy helped Workplace from Facebook promote its support of businesses during the pandemic. She also supports Method's pro bono work for Parity, a non-profit for female leadership.
Elizabeth Luke, advertising communications lead, Pinterest
While other social platforms get more press, Luke has helped get outlets like The New York Times and Ad Age to pay attention to how Pinterest was tamping down on misinformation and providing a "refuge" from political ads.
She helped get Pinterest in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a trade body formed to tackle harmful content proliferating on social media.
Before Pinterest, Luke had a similar remit at Twitter.
Will Moss, director of reputation communications, Intel Corporation
Moss has helped Intel as it advocated for more semiconductor manufacturing in the US and sought government approval to sell products to Huawei.
During the pandemic, Moss was the point person when it came to communicating about health and safety to workers and the public.
Laura Anderson, who hired him in 2016, called him a "steadying force at the company, a trusted advisor within it and a go-to resource to top technology and business journalists at the leading global media organizations."
Before Intel, Moss worked at Motorola Mobility and BCW.
Will Nevius, head of communications, Canaan
Nevius helps Canaan, a venture capital with almost $6 billion in assets under management, and its investments as they seek help telling their stories to the press.
Nevius advised Aeva Inc., a company that is developing a sensor for self-driving cars, as it prepares to go public; and helped land coverage in Bloomberg for Canaan's announcement of a $800 million raise.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, he was known for cozying up to journalists by hosting off-the-record dinner parties with reporters.
Prior to joining Canaan, Nevius worked at Facebook's policy communications group and Glover Park Group.
Ayelet Noff, founder and CEO, SlicedBrand
Noff, the founder of Blonde 2.0, a PR firm that was well known among tech journalists for big-name clients like Waze, Microsoft, and Viber, liquidated it in 2020 and launched a new venture, SlicedBrand.
There, she doubled down on blockchain, representing the IOTA Foundation, which created a smart wallet with Jaguar Land Rover.
Other clients include AI startup XAIN, communications equipment supplier AudioCodes, and investing tool Springbox AI.
John O'Brien, principal, Strange Brew Strategies
At Strange Brew Strategies, which was founded in 2017, O'Brien focuses on high-tech areas like AI, machine learning, and aerospace and has helped roped in clients like American Express, Cloudflare, and Dataiku.
Notable media coverage for clients included pieces on GitHub and Arweave in Bloomberg Businessweek and Fortune, respectively.
"O'Brien consistently brings great story ideas and is a pleasure to work with," one senior tech reporter said.
O'Brien previously worked at The OutCast Agency, where he helped launch Coinbase.
Bo Park, head of technology PR, ICR
ICR has been a big name in financial communications and investor relations, but it's becoming a player in tech PR, thanks to the efforts of Bo Park.
She uses ICR's Wall Street experience to pitch against bigger PR firms, working with clients like Intel, Mobileye, Samsung's Harman, and Scout.
She also led PR around the IPOs of Zoom and BigCommerce and worked behind the scenes on SPAC transactions for electric vehicle companies like Fisker, Lordstown Motors, and Canoo.
Andrew Prairie, VP of corporate communications, AMD
Prairie is the guy behind the PR strategy for semiconductor manufacturer AMD as it created computer and graphics processors to compete against the likes of Intel and NVIDIA.
Prairie also helped get attention for AMD's new CEO, Lisa Su, through keynote speeches at CES and other tradeshows, and coverage in Barron's, which named her one of the world's best CEOs, as well as Bloomberg and Fortune.
The company has been on a tear, its share price topping $80 from below $10 just a few years ago.
Daniel Roberts, communications lead for innovation and growth, General Motors
Roberts joined General Motors in 2021 to handle communications around several businesses, including global connected customer, innovation, BrightDrop, and the office data and analaytics. His remit includes electric delivery vehicles and tech integrations with Apple, Amazon, and Google.
The up-and-coming crisis communications manager joined GM from Facebook, where he helped steer its push to register 4 million voters ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, which included a partnership with Michelle Obama's voter registration drive.
Roberts was the lead spokesperson on high-profile stories like Facebook shutting down pages that governors Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Phil Murphy (D-NJ) called on the company to do more to curb hate speech.
Before Facebook, Roberts led East Coast communications and marketing at Lyft, where he spearheaded a campaign that provided thousands of rides to Black cultural sites during Black History Month.
Ash Spiegelberg, partner and head of the San Francisco office, Brunswick Group
Spiegelberg leads Brunswick Group's San Francisco office, where he's headed up work on Pinterest's and ZoomInfo's IPOs and the upcoming IPOs of DoorDash and Airbnb.
"He's easy to talk to, always on the pulse of what's going on with the highest-profile tech companies, and won't mislead you," one tech journalist said of Spiegelberg.
Spiegelberg also advised voice chat company Discord; and ICON Health & Fitness on its IPO and lawsuit against Peloton. Facebook is a longstanding client.
Brittany Stone, managing director, Moxie Communications
Stone handles clients like WeTransfer, Pandora, and Mirror and is a press favorite.
Notably, journalists praised her for her candor and professionalism even when things go awry, as they did with Casper when its IPO performance was termed a "disaster."
"Legitimately, if more PR people were Brittany I'd hate my job a lot less," one tech journalist effused.
Daniella Vallurupalli, head of global communications, Cloudflare
Vallurapalli has juggled one sensitive issue after another at the cybersecurity company.
They include its 2019 outage; its 2017 brush with controversy after the company dropped the Daily Stormer; and its campaign to defeat a group of patent trolls.
She also oversaw comms for Cloudflare's 2019 IPO and helped it get press for sharing internet behavior trends during the pandemic.
And after Vallurupalli booked some appearances on "Mad Money" with Jim Cramer, Cloudflare was named one of the CNBC host's "work from home" stocks, along with Zoom and Slack.
Margit Wennmachers, operating partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Wennmachers has helped build the brands of companies like Facebook and Skype.
For decades, Wennmachers has cultivated relationships with reporters and taught tech founders to court the media.
Her work amplified Andreessen Horowitz's brand and made it synonymous with venture capital.
CNN called her the "real queen of Silicon Valley," while Wired said she has a "sixth sense for communications strategy."
Rachel Whetstone, chief communications officer, Netflix
This Tory power broker-turned-Silicon Valley PR pro has worked alongside some of the most powerful politicians in the world, an experience she uses to counsel some of the biggest CEOs in tech.
Whetstone has worked with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and COO Sheryl Sandberg, and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Today, she leads communications at Netflix, helping cement its reputation as a corporate do-gooder with a premium product by promoting its content, platform, and position as the leading digital video streamer.
Diana Wong, VP of communications, Imperva
For a decade and a half, Wong has been on the communications frontlines in Silicon Valley, helping launch products, fend off hostile takeovers, and shape the reputation of companies like Yahoo, HP, Oracle.
Since joining cybersecurity company Imperva three months ago, Wong handled communications of its acquisition of database security startup jSonar.
Most recently, at RSA Security, she led communications around its $2.1 billion sale by Dell last year. She also was the lead spokesperson for BEA System and Yahoo when they faced takeover attempts by Carl Icahn.
Carly Wyatt, director of global communications, Zoox
At Zoox, Wyatt's job has been to raise awareness of the self-driving car startup.
She and her team showcased Zoox's technology, safety, and business plans in places like The Financial Times, Venture Beat, and Business Insider.
Earlier this year, Wyatt and her team helped arrange appearances by Zoox CEO Aicha Evans and CTO Jesse Levinson on Kara Swisher's "Recode Decode" podcast.
She was also the PR go-to when Amazon bought the startup for $1.2 billion.
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.
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