Staff members

Peter Kelley

Principal

Peter has created successful issue campaigns for public interest causes in Washington since 1990, after 10 years as an award-winning newspaper reporter. He founded Kelley Campaigns in 2004 to work exclusively for non-profit environmental and human rights groups, public agencies, and labor unions. In 2006, Peter affiliated with RenewComm, working for companies to promote clean energy. He acquired the company two years later.

Peter started his career on a chain of small-town newspapers in Michigan, then covered city and state government for the Harrisburg Patriot-News. He came to D.C. to cover politics for Newhouse Newspapers. He was the founding staff member of the National Security News Service, and continues to serve on its board of directors. After a stint at Fenton Communications, he held the top communications job at four national environmental groups. He created the EarthList program for the League of Conservation Voters. He represented National Environmental Trust at the Kyoto treaty talks on global warming, and ran numerous communications campaigns to stop right-wing attempts to roll back public health and environmental laws during the 1990s. He launched the national River Agenda and a movement-wide website for American Rivers, and campaigned against George W. Bush's record in four swing states for Environment2004.

Peter is among the 1,000 Americans trained by Al Gore to deliver the slide show from An Inconvenient Truth, and was communications mentor to the 2007 University of Maryland Solar Decathlon team that won 1st out of 20 in the communications category. He taught Public Communications Management at American University, and was a

Gannett Foundation Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow. He holds a BA in Government from Harvard.

Patricia Charles

Media Relations Director

Patricia Charles has successfully pitched public interest stories to journalists and editorial writers nationwide for over four years, obtaining major coverage for clients such as the Rocky Mountain Institute, Ceres, the National Environmental Education Foundation, the Federal Rights Project, Qteros biofuels, and the movies King Corn and Body of War.

Patricia joined Kelley Campaigns|RenewComm after working as an account executive on the media relations team at Hill & Knowlton for public interest clients such as Friends of the National Zoo, George and Nick Clooney's documentary on Darfur, and the Corporation for National and Community Service. She was previously Interim Communications Director at Center for a New American Dream, interned at National Public Radio in D.C. and at WMFD-TV in Mansfield, Ohio, and worked for Sun Newspaper in Valley View, Ohio. She holds a BA in Speech Communications and Electronic Media Productions from Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio.

Ron Zucker

Associate Director of Campaigns

Ron comes to the media relations world through a long history of activism. He has worked on issues ranging from energy security, environmental and climate change education, nuclear proliferation, global trade and campaign finance reform. He was the researcher on the New Press book, Whose Trade Organization, and has been a contributor to many other books, studies and magazine articles.

Ron joined Kelley Campaigns after working as the Legislative Director for 2020 Vision. He’s been a researcher and writer for Public Citizen, where he was the web publisher for their WhiteHouseForSale project. He was Associate Director of Americans for Democratic Action. He has also managed campaigns since the age of 17. He went to Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he earned a BA in Political Science and Philosophy, with a minor in English. He also spent 10 years in the Silicon Valley as a self described geek, working in a variety of roles within the tech sector. Ron is an avid tournament bridge player, and an accomplished and recorded musician and songwriter.

Sarah Goldberg

Political Communications Associate

Sarah puts her people person skills to work for her clients by talking daily with spokespeople, journalists and Capitol Hill staffers to get them noticed. One of her most rewarding experiences has been working with the coal ash disaster victims in Harriman, Tenn. She updated the national and Tennessee media daily as the story developed, conducted a full-scale media tour and lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., for two Harriman residents. and secured one of the residents a role as the lead witness at a congressional hearing.

Sarah Goldberg previously worked in Washington, D.C. for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, and the Food Research and Action Center. At Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her BA in Religion and Politics, she mentored other students in written work and public speaking skills at Mount Holyoke's Speaking, Arguing and Writing Center. She was a coordinator of the Women's Education Worldwide Student Leadership Conference, held at Mount Holyoke in June 2008. She speaks Spanish and Italian.

Communications interns and fellows

Kelley Campaigns also employs seniors at nearby University of Maryland and Howard University as interns, and post-graduate fellows. They can get academic credit and may qualify to be paid for their work with us. To apply for an internship with Kelley Campaigns, please click here.

Chaitra Harris

Business Manager

Chaitra Harris manages time and expenses for the campaigns we carry out, as well as offering full fluency in Spanish to campaigns that benefit from Spanish-language pitching and materials. She taught Spanish at Gonzaga High School, where she achieved a 100% pass rate for 123 students, and then went into business management roles at the law firms of Powers, Pyles, Sutter & Verville, PC, of Vienna, Va., and Pillsbury Winthrop, LLP, of Washington, D.C. As Director of Business Operations for Merrick Design and Build Inc., a construction firm in Kensington, Md., Chaitra overhauled the company’s technology and business systems before joining Kelley Campaigns. Chaitra graduated summa cum laude from Catholic University with a BA in Spanish for

International Service and a minor in Accounting.

Allison Lenthall

Communications Manager

Allison specializes in the energy and environment work of Kelley Campaigns|RenewComm, working closely with our clients’ CEOs and executive teams to execute their communications strategies. She plans and staffs interviews and senior executives' "media crawls" across the country, and plans special events and expositions.

Allison has worked as a legal recruiter, making 50-70 cold calls a day to partners in international law firms, and in sales and customer retention for an international educational company, where she was responsible for approxmiately 2,000 participants a year, and the recruitment, management and training of a team of 30-plus volunteers. She taught English as a Second Language in Spain and the D.C. area, and describes her time teaching middle school in the Baltimore City Public Schools as "management experience." She also taught for Job Corps in Anacostia, D.C. Allison founded BeGreenMinded.com in 2007 as a personal endeavor to educate individuals and spur action to lessen the negative impact on the environment. She holds a BA in Linguistics and Spanish from the College of William and Mary, and an MA from Georgetown University. She is near-fluent in Spanish.

Andrew Schenkel

Production Manager

Andrew was state capital bureau chief for the NBC-TV affiliate KCWY in Cheyenne, Wyo.,, from 2006-2009 until his relocation to Washington, D.C., where his wife is attending law school. He has recently worked with with Clean Air-Cool Planet on creating video animations of sea-level rise in major cities along the East Coast, and with the Mind and Life Institute to coordinate TV coverage of a two-day conference with the Dalai Lama at Constitution Hall. He works for the Kelley Campaigns|RenewComm team on audio-video production, and as a general assignment project manager, media pitcher, and media trainer.

He previously worked as a television reporter for WSPX in Syracuse, N.Y., where he graduated from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, with a BS in Broadcast Journalism. For samples of his video work, please see his portfolio

Josh Baran

Senior Advisor

Josh Baran has been a communications and public relations professional since 1982. He is best known for his work in the areas of environment, technology, corporate relations and public affairs, entertainment and films, non-profit communications, crisis management, publishing, and religion.

During a long and varied career, Josh has worked with a broad range of clients, companies, and leaders—from Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama to Arnold Schwarzenegger; from Time Warner, Miramax and Sony Pictures to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and Amnesty International. He directed strategic communications for Al Gore's book and movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the special environmental campaign around the blockbuster film, “The Day After Tomorrow” for MoveOn.org, and the ABC-TV film, “The Day After,” still ranked as the one of the biggest TV-related events in history.

He led Josh Baran & Associates for nearly a decade, and sold his company to Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, where he was Executive Vice President for several years. He also served as Director of Communications for Microsoft, where he advised Bill Gates, and is the author-editor of a spiritual anthology, 365 Nirvana Here and Now.

Wayne Jaquith

Senior Advisor

Wayne has worked fulltime as a leader and skilled manager in the peace, disarmament, environmental, and safe-energy fields for more than 30 years. As an attorney and the first executive director of Nantucket Land Council, he led the fight to preserve Nantucket’s fragile resources. He was co-organizer of the Massachusetts Nuclear Referendum Campaign, which got an initiative on the ballot in 1982 that passed 2-1 and limited nuclear power and low-level radioactive dumping. He then served as the first executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and later as executive director of Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, and of the Ploughshares Fund. He founded the Public Education Center and its National Security News Service and Natural Resources News Service, and served as president through 1997, as the news services investigated numerous major stories and assisted the news media in breaking them.

From 1997 to 2008, Wayne worked as coordinator of the Peace and Security Funders Group. He has also served as a consultant to the W. Alton Jones Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, Turner Foundation, and Columbe Foundation. Wayne is a graduate of Cornell University and Northeastern University School of Law. He is an active fundraiser and volunteer for progressive candidates in congressional, senatorial and presidential election campaigns.

Partners

We partner with a variety of top PR, advertising, graphic design, and web strategy firms, as well as top individual consultants in the Washington, D.C. area and nationwide. Learn more about our other regular partners.

Consultants