Decoding public policy issues

Providence firm combines its communications and public affairs expertise

PROVIDENCE, RI December 28, 2005 - Christine Heenan isn't afraid of complex policy issues, tough-sell causes or brilliant academics who can't seem to speak in clear, simple English.

Her first job out of college was with policy expert Ira Magaziner. In the early 1990s, she accompanied him to Washington and worked on policy, speechwriting and public relations in the Clinton White House, promoting health insurance reform against strong resistance.

She spent six years at Brown University, overseeing federal, state and local relations and directing the school's in-house public affairs consulting arm.

She learned to be a quick study, and to translate jargon and highly specialized terms into accessible language. She learned how to get media attention, how to run successful public events, how to help big and small organizations get their message out.

Now, with a staff of nine like-minded PR and government relations experts, Heenan is putting all that knowledge to work for a wide range of mostly nonprofit and public-sector clients: Brown, the state Department of Education, the Rhode Island State Nurses Association.

How does a small, four-year-old firm get all that business in such a competitive market?

Part of it is expertise: Few PR agencies in Rhode Island focus as closely on policy, so The Clarendon Group has its niche. Part of it is Heenan's contacts and reputation - she's known in Washington and in Rhode Island, in education and in the health care world.

But it's also an intangible, says Stacy Paterno, director of federal relations and Clarendon's most senior staffer. "It's our ability to work with clients, putting them first," she says. "We work well with others, and we partner well with other firms, not just compete with them."

Many Clarendon clients have PR staff of their own, and yet they enlist the agency for specific projects - especially those that involve translating complex policy, research and/or planning.

Clarendon turned the massive SHAPE reports on Rhode Island's health care system into manageable, narrative-form summaries. It helped make the case for changing laws that excluded alcohol-related injuries or diseases from insurance coverage (Rhode Island repealed its own clause to that effect this year). And two weeks ago, it condensed a 350-page master plan for Aquidneck Island's West Side into an easy-to-read, four-page media handout.

When a project involves skills that Clarendon doesn't have, on the other hand, the firm makes referrals to kindred spirits who do, such as NAIL, the Providence advertising firm.

"I think one of our great strengths is that we don't try to do everything," says Heenan, "but we build strong alliances."

Clarendon's ubiquity in the Rhode Island policy world - and beyond - is most striking if you know how it started: as two next-door neighbors with small children working out of their homes. Both Heenan and Paterno lived on Clarendon Avenue, on the East Side; thus the name.

At first, Heenan was doing the communications work, and Paterno, whose background is in banking, helped with the books.

"Then she asked me to help out doing some research projects," Paterno recalls. She delved into academic medicine and the dearth of state funding for it. "It got me engaged in health care, and I love it, so it was an easy fit."

In the summer of 2001, Heenan incorporated Clarendon as an LLC, and the two women moved into a "real office" in the Jewelry District. They hired another staffer, Susanna Rhodes, who had run public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island.

The client roster kept growing - all through referrals - and one by one, they hired more junior and senior staffers, most recently Thomas LaFauci, a Washington political veteran who last worked with U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.

Heenan has always been active in politics, and with the addition of LaFauci to the team, she and Paterno say they expect Clarendon to become a bigger player on that front.

"Our roots and our concentration continue to be in public policy," says Heenan. But with the 2006 campaign coming, she adds, "we'll probably be doing more [political work] than we've done before, though I suspect more nationally than locally."