Familiar lobbying shops have been reintroducing themselves to colleagues and clients under new identities.
Some firms adopted new names after mergers while others rebranded to showcase expanded aspirations.
Wynne Health Group’s original identity was centered on its founder, Billy Wynne, a former Senate Finance Committee health policy counsel. In June 2023, the firm changed its name to Impact Health Policy Partners as it brought on board a new chief executive, Yvette Fontenot, with Wynne continuing as chairman.
“The new name conveys exactly what we wanted to new potential clients and has a unifying effect for us,” said Fontenot, a veteran of the Senate Finance Committee, House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Obama White House. “It’s definitely helped with the transition.”
Rachel Pearson in 2023 rechristened Pearson & Associates as The Complete Agency, and Hobart Hallaway & Quayle became Venture Government Strategies.
Venture’s original marquee members, all of whom remain, include Robert Hobart, who had been a key staffer for members of the House Appropriations Committee; Rashid Hallaway, a former adviser to then Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.); and Ben Quayle, who served one term in the House as a Republican representing an Arizona district and who is the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle.
Its current partner lineup additionally includes former four-term Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), who served as a senior member of House Appropriations, leading at times its Homeland Security and Legislative Branch subcommittees.
The former Elmendorf Ryan, led by expatriates from the offices of ex-Rep. Dick Gephart and ex-Sen. Harry Reid, was renamed Subject Matter after a 2015 merger, and in 2023 it went through a corporate marriage with Kivvit.
Earlier this year it announced that both legacy names have been retired. The firm is now called Avōq, a name that helps it promote services in new ways, said Steve Elmendorf, managing partner and co-founder.
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Cypress Advocacy’s name was changed after internal conversations about the future direction of its business. By 2020, it was growing beyond its roots as an adviser to the financial services industry, explained Langston Emerson, a partner at the firm that’s been rebranded as Mindset Advocacy.
The updated name helps draw attention to the firm’s expanding breadth, with more work being done on energy, environmental, health care, retirement, tax and telecommunications, said Emerson, who was involved in the process, which he said required some deep reflection among the firm’s leadership.
“It was a process of us describing to them who we were and where we wanted to go,” Emerson recalled.
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