Mark Penn

A strategist and consultant, Mark Penn has provided crucial assistance to the political campaigns of more than 25 world leaders. Currently, he is the president and managing partner of The Stagwell Group LLC, a Washington, DC-based company that he established in 2015. Mark Penn previously served as the chief strategy officer and executive vice president of Microsoft, the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, and the CEO of the market research company Penn Schoen Berland, which he cofounded and sold to the worldwide PR and communications firm WPP.

An alumnus of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, Mr. Penn pursued a four-decade career in advertising, market research, consulting, and public relations. Over the years, he has earned a reputation for his ability to successfully develop core corporate strategies, deploy data in innovative ways to produce new and actionable insights, and add value across market segments.

At The Stagwell Group, Mark Penn and his team have assembled a private equity fund that seeks to add high-performance digital first companies to its portfolio. The Stagwell Group started with $250 million in capital to invest and aims to add $750 million in acquisitions in the marketing and communications sector.

Mark Penn is also a skilled political strategist, serving as a White House pollster to President Bill Clinton and playing an instrumental role in his re-election victory in 1996. He also worked as the chief strategist to Hillary Clinton in her campaign for the Senate and 2008 presidential run.

Most recently, Mr. Penn wrote the book Microtrends Squared: The New Small Forces Driving the Big Disruptions Today, in which he discusses his insights into small societal trends shaping the 21st century.