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A lot has changed since I founded Fenton in 1982, but the commitment of Fenton to serving the public interest has not. I wanted to announce some changes that will help us continue to do our work: we have opened an office in Los Angeles, we’ve brought Steve Clemons on board as Managing Director in Washington, DC and we are expanding rapidly into the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) space.

Our work in Los Angeles will initially focus on First 5 LA, created by the 1998 California ballot initiative Proposition 10, which taxed tobacco to fund health, safety and early education efforts for children prenatal to age 5. We will provide strategy, advertising, marketing, outreach, training and media support to First 5’s Best Start effort in 14 communities throughout LA County. LA will operate under the direction of West Coast Managing Director Parker Blackman, with day-to-day operations handled by Paul Hernandez. Hernandez comes to Fenton from Sonnenshein, Nath and Rosenthal, where he was Managing Director of Public Law and Policy Strategies. Previously, Hernandez was Director of Communications and Public Affairs at The California Endowment.

Steve Clemons joins Fenton as Managing Director of our Washington DC office after a distinguished career at the New America Foundation. Clemons also writes the popular foreign affairs blog, The Washington Note.

For nearly 12 years, Steve has been a leading figure at the New America Foundation (NAF), a Washington think tank “of the radical center” with more than 140 employees. He will continue as a Senior Fellow at NAF and Director of their American Strategy Program. Previously, Clemons served as EVP of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Advisor to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and as the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center. Clemons is editor at large of Talking Points Memo, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Council on Geopolitical Risk.

Steve joins a leadership team that includes Chief of Advocacy Campaigns Ira Arlook, international practice head and EVP Bill Hamilton, environmental practice head and SVP Joel Finkelstein, civil and human rights practice head SVP Lydia Sermons, and SVP Doug Gordon, who leads our political advocacy work and will help manage the day to day operations of the DC office.

The firm is also expanding its client roster, adding Cleantech and Corporate Social Responsibility clients to its list of non-profit public interest organizations working in the fields of environment, public health, foreign affairs and human rights.

Fenton has added new corporate social responsibility and cleantech clients recently, including: Enerkem, which recycles carbon from municipal garbage into fuel; Knights Apparel’s new brand “Alta Gracia,” the first to pay its workers in the Dominican Republic four times the minimum wage and respect their right to form a union; and the Electric Drive Transportation Association for help in the introduction of the new generation of electric vehicles.

Our firm looks forward to doing more of what we’ve always done: serving the public interest by creating powerful issue campaigns for change.