Hope Hicks sat earlier than the Home Intelligence Committee in February 2018, going through a room filled with lawmakers hungry for solutions about Russian interference within the 2016 election. Below oath, she admitted to telling “white lies” for Donald Trump. What struck observers wasn’t the admission itself, however her composure below withering scrutiny. That means to take care of message self-discipline had been solid years earlier in a modest workplace in Midtown Manhattan, below the tutelage of a person extensively considered probably the most relentless fixer of the final twenty years.
Matthew Hiltzik’s fame as an “assault canine” precedes him, but this narrative obscures a much more intriguing paradox. His eponymous agency has turn out to be one of many business’s most profitable expertise incubators, launching an unusually potent community of protégés into the very best echelons of company America.
Hicks parlayed her Hiltzik Methods expertise into White Home Communications Director, then government VP at Fox, and now COO of Megyn Kelly’s Satan Could Care Media. Emily Feingold, who began as Hiltzik’s assistant at Miramax, now oversees Netflix’s exterior communications throughout the U.S. and Canada—markets that drove practically $5 billion in income for the streaming big in Q2 of this yr. Rachel Adler moved from managing Hiltzik’s high-profile purchasers (suppose: Katie Couric, Justin Bieber, Chelsea Clinton) to repping Martha Stewart, Andrea Mitchell, Audie Cornish, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke and plenty of, many extra at Inventive Artists Company, a powerhouse “iceberg” that infiltrates each pocket of shopper tradition whereas deftly working beneath shopper radar.
The sample extends throughout sectors. Eric Koch founded Downfield Methods, a agency recognized for profitable in unlikely territory—together with serving to Blue Canine Democrats maintain deep Republican districts in 2024. Eliana Holm Yamshon serves as BlackRock’s International Head of Employer Model, shaping how the world’s largest asset supervisor attracts expertise throughout its $10 trillion operation. Rachel Rosenzweig directs communications at Thrive Capital, the enterprise agency behind early bets in Instagram, Spotify, Stripe and OpenAI—the world’s Most worthy privately held firm. Josh Raffel leveraged his Hiltzik expertise into White Home advisory roles on Center East coverage and tax reform. Jeremy Watkins heads up communications for the Knicks and Rangers at MSG. Sarah Rothman co-founded The Lede Firm, managing Hollywood’s most delicate PR ops for a roster that counts Reese Witherspoon, Rihanna and Emma Stone. These aren’t modest profession bumps, however trajectories from junior account government to C-suite management inside 5 to 10 years.
The Anti-Self-Promotion Paradox
Within the PR universe, noise usually masquerades as energy. Headlines are chased, controversies courted, affect measured in decibels. When first approached for this profile, Hiltzik’s response was characteristically restrained: “I’m very grateful and humbled by your curiosity in writing one thing like this. However I respectfully decline,” he stated. “We want to maintain the concentrate on our purchasers.” He cautiously consented solely after being assured the story would prominently characteristic his protégés.
I first met Hiltzik over a decade in the past. My lasting reminiscence of that assembly is that there was no lasting reminiscence. He left little impression—no grandstanding, no informal dropping of superstar shopper names, nothing memorable about his Midtown Manhattan workplace. It was, fairly intentionally, completely forgettable.
A second interplay proved extra revealing. When Observer sought entry to his longtime shopper Eric Schmidt, a junior affiliate politely deflected, making an attempt as a substitute to position a far much less distinguished identify. Pissed off, I raised the difficulty immediately with Hiltzik. His response was speedy—he stood firmly behind his workers. Championing smaller purchasers is as important as servicing marquee names, and worker loyalty is commonplace working process.
Hiltzik speaks like somebody perpetually conscious that every phrase carries weight far past the current second. His sentences weave by qualifiers and disclaimers, a thoughts continuously gauging context and penalties. He defaults to understatement, reliably shifting credit score towards colleagues or purchasers. He understands his function as adviser somewhat than protagonist.
He maintains such a low profile that Getty’s most up-to-date picture of Hiltzik is from 2015, so I introduced a photographer to his workplace late final month. Per week later, an apology hit my inbox. “I attempted my finest,” the photographer stated. “However he appeared very tense.” Hiltzik had appeared inflexible and uncomfortable in entrance of the digital camera, leading to remarkably few usable photographs. The person who spent his profession guaranteeing others look good had been betrayed by a palpable anti-promotional intuition.
Hiltzik’s workplace tells a unique story. He’s heat, welcoming, keen to indicate us all the things which means one thing to him—which is almost all the things. A black-and-white {photograph} by former shopper Annie Leibovitz captures Hiltzik amid Hillary Clinton’s marketing campaign staffers, crowded round a tv the night time of her victorious 2000 Senate race, for which he was the director of Jewish relations. Behind his desk hangs a watercolor by Deirdre Imus—a whimsical cowboy using a blue-speckled horse, a memento of his late shopper Don Imus, the shock jock who trusted Hiltzik sufficient to joke mid-crisis, “You’re giving me worse most cancers proper now” after saying his prognosis stay on-air with out warning. The sort of ribbing reserved for household. There’s a big folks artwork portray of an American flag he acquired at Sundance. “My mom loves all issues Americana,” Hiltzik explains. “Every thing in her home is purple, white and blue.” He’s a fourth-generation American, and his satisfaction is clear.
Hiltzik beams when discussing his kids—two daughters and a son—and his decade-plus teaching their sports activities groups. He holds up a championship ring from his son’s newest flag soccer season. He recounts how a participant whom the opposite coaches missed turned his first decide for his daughter’s basketball crew. Two phrases of recommendation—”decelerate”—reworked her right into a core participant that season.
When requested concerning the parallels between teaching youngsters’ sports activities and operating a PR agency, his response is straightforward: “First, you’ll want to perceive their strengths. Not everybody will probably be, or must be, the star of the present. Second, you’ll want to be dedicated to creating expertise within the second—and accepting of the truth that among the finest folks finally depart. It means they’ve discovered what they wanted to.”
Hiltzik holds a flyer-sized {photograph} of a younger man in his early twenties, wanting towards the digital camera with calm eyes and a slight, pure smile. It’s the sort of picture which may seem in a yearbook, if not for the pressing message printed in all-caps beneath the portrait: “BRING HIM HOME NOW!” A plea for the secure return of 21-year-old Omer Neutra, presumed to be among the many over 250 hostages taken within the October 7 assaults—the deadliest day for Jews for the reason that Holocaust. For 2 years, Hiltzik has labored carefully with Neutra’s dad and mom and brother and advocated for the households of lacking hostages. Final December, the Israeli navy confirmed Neutra, an IDF soldier, had been killed on October 7. He was born 24 years in the past at the moment, on October 14, a few month after his mom, eight months pregnant, fled Manhattan on foot throughout the Queensboro Bridge on September 11, 2001. “Do you thoughts if we ensure that is within the background?” Hiltzik asks. Neutra’s dad and mom are nonetheless awaiting the return of their son’s stays.
The Paradox of Loyalty
Business insiders counsel that Hiltzik’s means to fade into his environment is core to disaster administration—a unique kind of PR the place the aim is preserving folks out of the highlight somewhat than in it—and could also be extra strategic than temperamental. Although it’s turn out to be what defines him publicly, disaster administration constitutes a mere 20 p.c of his agency’s portfolio. “It’s what folks discover most,” he admits.
Regardless, this deliberate self-effacement creates area for one thing extra helpful. Linda Lipman, an EVP at Hiltzik Methods, has spent over 15 years there, and EVP Meghan Miele, 11 years. EVP Tiffany Siegel, over a decade, and Senior Administrators Chris Cunningham over seven years, and Jocelyn Dawson, six years. A number of others have stayed for eight years or extra. In an business the place the typical tenure hovers round three years, these numbers shouldn’t exist—particularly given the PR agency’s small dimension. Hiltzik Methods has lower than 40 full-time workers.
A 2024 survey discovered 44 p.c of PR and comms professionals give up as a consequence of exhaustion, with 78 p.c score their stress at eight out of ten. The Institute for Public Relations reported 28 p.c of communicators teetering on the sting, 36 p.c actively job looking. The sector’s churn fee—20.8 p.c in 2024, down from a brutal 29.3 p.c in 2021—nonetheless runs practically double the typical for skilled companies.
In an business constructed on burnout, folks keep at Hiltzik Methods. Lipman describes Hiltzik as somebody who “speaks with nice satisfaction about former workers who’ve gone on to massive roles,” who “can stroll into any room and join with these current.” Somebody with, in her phrases, “a caring coronary heart”—a phrase that sits oddly towards what others would possibly name a ruthless fame.
Hiltzik is unsentimental about match—if somebody isn’t performing or can’t deal with the strain, the connection ends rapidly and with out drama. It’s a practical method that former workers describe as truthful somewhat than harsh: you rise to the requirements or transfer on, with no exhausting emotions on both facet.
Even messy departures don’t bitter relationships. Melissa Nathan spent 10 years at Hiltzik Methods earlier than leaving in 2023 to discovered The Company Group, taking workers, Drake and the Chainsmokers together with her. It’s the sort of transfer that sometimes breeds everlasting unhealthy blood.
Inside months, Nathan’s new enterprise hit turbulence. She was employed by Justin Baldoni in 2024 in the course of the promotional interval for It Ends With Us, which he directed and co-starred in with Blake Vigorous. When Vigorous filed a sexual harassment lawsuit towards Baldoni in December, alleging a retaliatory smear marketing campaign, Nathan was named within the go well with. Alleged textual content messages surfaced, together with one the place Nathan purportedly informed Baldoni, “ we are able to bury anybody.” Nathan was named in one other lawsuit final month—this one filed by the goal of the same smear marketing campaign the publicist allegedly orchestrated on behalf of Insurgent Wilson.
Hiltzik may have piled on. The setup was good—former protégé takes purchasers, will get embroiled in allegations of fabricating defamatory web sites and deploying bot armies to destroy reputations. As a substitute, when requested about Nathan taking Drake (who lately returned to Hiltzik on a mission foundation), “She earned that shopper.” When requested about her alleged ways: “That’s not how we do issues.” No elaboration past: “We create an atmosphere the place everybody understands our values.”
Breanna Butler, who left Hiltzik Methods with Nathan, says the largest lesson she discovered there was dedication to fact, “even when the information could also be lower than favorable.” Nathan nonetheless calls Hiltzik “household” and credit him with educating her that “each story has many sides.”
Feingold additionally makes use of the phrase “household” when describing her time with Hiltzik. Her first day working at Miramax was September 10, 2001. After the towers fell on September 11, he sat together with her on the stoop of her Higher West Facet condominium constructing, speaking, ensuring she was okay.
The familial terminology isn’t unintentional—it displays a office the place skilled relationships carry uncommon weight and longevity, and the place efficiency and private connection are held to equally exacting requirements. That tradition is self-selecting: it attracts individuals who thrive on excessive expectations and complete funding on the highest stakes, and naturally weeds out those that don’t. When former workers use the phrase ‘household,’ they’re describing one thing intense and demanding that isn’t for everybody—however for individuals who match, it’s exactly what makes them keep.
The Basis
“What you’ll want to find out about Matthew is that his codependency together with his household is extraordinary,” one former worker confides, and means it as the very best praise. “His father, George, is a really formative particular person in his life.” Watching George’s profession as a expertise agent at companies like Bienstock taught Matthew the worth of letting individuals who disagree with you clarify themselves. The elder Hiltzik can also be a loyal household man who made enterprise selections by that lens. When an unknown disc jockey named Glenn Beck cold-called him in 1999, George gave him a shot after listening to how Beck spoke about his new spouse. Years later, when Beck wished to rent Matthew, George was “1,000 p.c towards it.” However each males have been adults. They might make their very own judgments.
George is a near-constant presence at Hiltzik Methods, within the workplace weekly and continuously on the opposite finish of the cellphone. Present and former workers point out this unprompted, recognizing the elder Hiltzik as greater than a proud father checking in. He stays an lively sounding board, a hyperlink to many years of leisure business relationships, and a residing embodiment of the values his son absorbed: loyalty, discretion and an unwavering dedication to the folks you select to face beside, regardless of how controversial.
When Matthew started representing Beck in 2007—years earlier than Beck would model Barack Obama a racist and turn out to be one among cable information’s most polarizing figures—his Democratic colleagues have been shocked. Ken Sunshine, one of many PR business’s most influential executives and a long-time mentor to Hiltzik, didn’t mince phrases. “I like Matt,” Sunshine informed the Washington Submit in 2009. “I worth our friendship, however I wouldn’t be caught useless representing Glenn Beck.” Some mates responded with jokes concerning the unlikely pairing. Hiltzik’s reply to critics remained constant: He doesn’t abandon purchasers primarily based on others’ opinions. That very same ethos—selecting folks and standing by them—extends to how he builds his crew.
Now at CAA, Adler’s recruitment story reveals how Hiltzik identifies expertise. She anticipated a conventional interview once they met at his Park Avenue South workplace in 2009. As a substitute, “it felt like summer season camp,” she remembers. They talked about her upbringing, sports activities and siblings—not her work expertise. She calls it “a familial dialog” the place “the connection will get constructed” earlier than you understand you’re in it.
The core query he requested repeatedly over her 4 years with the corporate: “Can you work it out?” Not whether or not she had the reply, however whether or not she may discover it. “His perception in me made me suppose I may do way more than I assumed,” she says.
Lipman describes Hiltzik’s hiring philosophy merely: He seems to be for qualities that counsel somebody can work with others and clear up issues. Alumni describe studying “discretion, containment and message shaping,” the power to handle high-stakes conditions with poise. The teachings are constant throughout generations. Former workers recall his fixed chorus: “Are you asking the proper questions?” He confused responsiveness above practically all the things else. When requested what makes Hiltzik indignant, present and former workers all gave variations of the identical reply: lag time in responding to purchasers. His message was clear—silence is extra damaging than imperfection—and his ideas have been solid early.
Earlier than finishing Fordham Regulation, Hiltzik volunteered for Carolyn Mccarthy’s profitable 1996 congressional marketing campaign, drawn to her advocacy for gun management after her husband was killed within the Lengthy Island Rail Street bloodbath. He turned press secretary for the New York State Democratic Committee and communications advisor to Hillary Clinton’s first Senate marketing campaign. In 1998, Hiltzik helped elect Chuck Schumer to the U.S. Senate and Eliot Spitzer as lawyer normal. That file caught Harvey Weinstein’s consideration, who wished to fill a job that merged communications with political technique, putting Hiltzik on the intersection of Hollywood affect and Democratic energy. In 1999, at simply 27, Hiltzik turned Weinstein’s loyal spokesman at Miramax, virtually twenty years earlier than the highly effective mogul’s downfall. He left in 2005 and based Hiltzik Methods three years later.
This June, Weinstein informed The New York Occasions that Hiltzik was his first selection to assist steer him by the #MeToo accusations that started surfacing in 2017. “It was a shocker to me,” Weinstein stated of Hiltzik’s refusal to simply accept what turned one of many highest-profile disaster instances in trendy PR historical past. Hiltzik made the identical name years earlier, in 2014, passing on the prospect to symbolize Invoice Cosby after being launched to the comic when tens of ladies got here forth with tales of sexual assault. Hiltzik confirms he turned Weinstein and Cosby down, however in the identical breath clarifies he holds no judgment for attorneys or publicists who tackle controversial purchasers. “Lots of people in PR are allergic to controversy,” he says.
Nathan, who helped lead Hiltzik’s leisure and disaster division for 10 years, says disaster PR is “instinctive” somewhat than taught. Hiltzik hones these instincts, coaching each purchasers and workers to navigate crises with “empathy and beauty.”
When a viral video confirmed Dora the Explorer listening to Alec Baldwin’s leaked cellphone rant towards his daughter, Hiltzik deadpanned: “Three-year-olds in every single place are upset that Dora the Explorer and her mates are being dragged into this.” Though he ended that story with absurdist deflection, the actor saved him busy. Baldwin’s 2013 homophobic outburst towards a reporter reworked right into a swift apology to GLAAD and an emotional protection of his spouse, defusing what might need been career-ending backlash.
When Manti Te’O’s nonexistent girlfriend scandal threatened his draft prospects, with NFL thousands and thousands hanging within the steadiness, the Notre Dame linebacker’s public response emphasised his function as hoax sufferer, presenting cellphone information that documented lots of of hours of calls with somebody he believed to be actual. Earlier than being utterly vindicated for a fabricated theft story in Rio, Ryan Lochte publicly apologized on NBC Nightly Information, the place the Olympic swimmer attributed the scandal to “immature conduct,” and reframed his deception as youthful poor judgment. Brad Pitt’s divorce narrative emphasised contrition and sobriety over scandal. Johnny Depp’s defamation victory over Amber Heard was a story of reclaiming fame somewhat than revenge. And final yr, when Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter stole $16 million to cowl playing money owed, the story turned concerning the baseball star being defrauded somewhat than complicit in unlawful betting, a place federal prosecutors in the end confirmed.
When requested about these instances, Hiltzik rapidly corrects the file. He didn’t create diversions—he surfaced truths. “Correct, fact-based context wins.”
Within the early hours of the morning that we met in September, he’d been on the cellphone with a reporter, demanding to know why what ought to have been an easy, 300-word information story about one among Silicon Valley’s most distinguished feminine executives wanted to finish with such bias. Although he trusts his workers to deal with virtually all the things, he’s nonetheless very a lot within the weeds.
That stage of non-public involvement explains the shopper roster, and the sample reveals his methodology: be relentless for purchasers, not with workers. The excellence issues. Hiltzik has solved an issue that plagues most PR companies—the right way to appeal to and retain folks able to dealing with the highest-stakes conditions whereas sustaining fierce shopper loyalty. The reply: put money into expertise, understanding that their success amplifies his personal affect and the agency’s fame for excellence.
Whether or not that is real altruism or refined self-interest is unimaginable to untangle. Most certainly, it’s each—a strategic method that occurs to align with treating folks nicely. However Hiltzik’s legacy isn’t written in disaster headlines or superstar gossip. It’s embedded within the institutional reminiscence of the handfuls of organizations the place his alumni now lead—seen in methods he by no means wished to be.
