Mark's Story

 

Mark Herr provides strategic communications advice and support to prominent companies and public figures who find themselves engaged in high-profile litigation, labor disputes, legislative and regulatory battles, and other public controversies. A former trial lawyer, regulator, reporter and senior corporate communications executive, Mark provides a sophisticated understanding of the unique junction of the court of law and the court of public opinion.

 

His time as a regulator and in politics gives him a strong public policy background, while his years working closely with senior C-suite executives give him the poise and presence to deal with CEOs and other high profile senior executives and personalities. Mark’s years as a litigator and regulator help him mediate between the legal world and the world inhabited by founders, executives and other prominent figures.  

 

Before founding his own boutique communications firm in 2020, Mark led or helped lead the communications efforts of three iconic financial services companies, Merrill Lynch, AIG and SAC Capital / Point72 Asset Management. He helped devise their communications strategies, built their brands and sub-brands, and shaped their responses to some of the highest-profile legal and reputational crises of the past two decades in the financial world.  

 

Earlier in his career, Mark was a civil litigator in New Jersey and then served as the Director and Assistant Attorney General in Charge of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, the state’s primary civil litigation agency. While leading Consumer Affairs as a member of Gov. Christie Whitman’s administration, Mark spearheaded pioneering litigation in telecom, energy, Internet and securities fraud cases.

 

At Merrill Lynch, Mark created and executed the public policy, regulatory, legal and crisis communications strategies as the company dealt with the turn-of-the-century Tech-Wreck research crisis, Enron and Auction Rate Securities litigations, as well as other reputational and public policy issues the company faced, including the Martha Stewart prosecution and the fiduciary duty rule campaign.

 

Joining AIG in the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, Mark served as AIG’s Head of Media Relations and as a member of the insurer’s crisis management team, as the company navigated being the poster child for the crisis. Working closely with CEO Bob Benmosche and senior company litigators, Mark devised the responses to the company’s fall from grace and was a key architect of its reputational comeback while serving as its chief spokesman.

 

Among the high-profile cases during his tenure at AIG, Mark led the company’s communications strategy in its pension litigation against former CEO Hank Greenberg, shareholder suits against AIG and sundry coverage disputes. He was the architect of the company’s public responses to Congressional inquiries and regulatory scrutiny regarding the government bailout of the company.

 

Hired by Steve Cohen and SAC Capital to create and build the firm’s global communications function, Mark served as Managing Director and Head of Global Communications. As a member of the firm’s management team, he used his expertise in crisis communications and media relations to design the response to SAC’s federal indictment and the SEC administrative action brought against Mr. Cohen.

 

He devised the firm’s reputational comeback strategy that took SAC from being viewed then by many as a pariah after its 2013 federal guilty plea to a rebranded firm, Point72 Asset Management, that enjoyed a 65%+ approval when Mark retired in 2020.

 

During his years working as a senior advisor to Mr. Cohen, Mark also built the brands for Mr. Cohen’s VC firm, Point72 Ventures, his industry-unique analyst training vehicle, Point72 Academy, and his philanthropic veterans mental health treatment program, Cohen Veterans Network. In his last year at Point72, Mark led the communications effort for Mr. Cohen’s purchase of the New York Mets.

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After Mark retired from Point72 in 2020, Mr. Cohen asked Mark to continue to advise on Mets-related communications. Since then, Mark’s other clients have included financial services, sports, entertainment, fintech, marketing tech and biotech companies, as well as high-profile, ultra-wealthy business leaders who find themselves in reputationally challenging episodes.  

 

Among Mark’s work, he served as an advisor on labor-related issues to Tesla and also to Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick, as well as defending Activision and Mr. Kotick’s reputation after Mr. Kotick was wrongly accused of tolerating false claims of company-wide sexual harassment. Mark is a senior advisor to a New York businessman wrongly accused of being a spy for the People’s Republic of China and was the senior communications advisor to a team that kept a global financier accused of insider trading out of jail. 

 

Mark has also been a senior advisor on offshore wind, geared ETFs and corporate governance campaigns in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Texas and Washington, D.C. He has advised private equity firms and helped build the reputations of fertility, organic health and other fledgling companies. 

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During his pre-Wall Street career, Mark was a speechwriter for Gov. Thomas H. Kean and wrote the 1988 Keynote Address to the Republican National Convention, before his career as a trial lawyer. He also served as the Executive Director of the New Jersey State Republican Party before returning to his private legal practice. 

 

Earlier, Mark was the New Jersey Statehouse bureau chief for United Press International, reported for the Bergen Record, the Atlanta Journal, and worked in radio and TV news in Columbus and Savannah, Georgia. 

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Mark’s background gives him a unique, 360-degree understanding of what it means to be in the blinding spotlight of public opinion, especially under the duress of litigation and regulatory controversies. 

 

Few communications professionals have Mark’s background and expertise, fewer still have been in the thick of as many high-stakes matters and issues involving as many high-profile companies as he has. He has earned the trust of some of the most demanding executives and personalities in the world and repaid that trust by providing advice and guidance that helped those leaders achieve their goals and extricate them from unpleasant circumstances. 

 

Mark earned his B.A. from Colgate University cum laude and with Honors in History, his Master’s degree from Columbia University, and his J.D. from the Seton Hall University School of Law, where he was a member of the Constitutional Law Journal.