In February 2009, John Weiss went to dinner at A Voce with food writer Bret Thorn. Missy Robbins was in the kitchen. There were mushrooms with fonduta, chestnut pappardelle, lamb chops and enough pasta to make a business lunch reconsider its ambitions. Weiss was working at the Susan Magrino Agency, representing the restaurant. Thorn had questions for the chef about Chicago. She seemed rather happier discussing New York.
Weiss received a brief review of his own: “Good dining companion.” For a publicist, there are worse notices. Here was a job conducted across a table, through introductions and questions, with the person making the food close enough to explain it. The publicist had brought a writer into a room where something could happen. The writer would decide what deserved to leave it.
Seventeen years later, Weiss is co-founder and co-CEO of CURICH | WEISS, now operating as CURICH WEISS AMPLIFY. His work encompasses hotels, spirits, food, travel and the arrangements that bring those worlds together. That early dinner offers a useful way into his career: a relationship, a setting and a reason to pay attention.
A career on both sides of the brief
Weiss studied international relations at Boston University, earning a BA. His early professional years were spent at Magrino, where his roles progressed through account management to senior account director. He subsequently became a vice president at Edelman and headed public relations at ALOHA before starting his own business in 2015.
The sequence put him inside different kinds of organizations: an agency serving multiple clients, a large communications firm and a company directing its own publicity. Each gives a publicist a different view of the same assignment. Someone must produce the work; someone else must decide whether to buy it. Weiss had experience of both responsibilities before his name appeared on the door.
There is an earlier glimpse of his eventual partnership in a 2011 spirits announcement. Its contacts listed James Curich at William Grant & Sons and Weiss at the Susan Magrino Agency. They were already working across that client-agency divide. Years before sharing a business, their names shared a release.
The first month refused to stay small
Curich and Weiss had long discussed opening an agency. A conversation over drinks became a business plan. In 2015, their first proposal secured a portfolio of six spirits brands. They expected to concentrate on that account. By their one-month anniversary, five additional clients had signed.
Six brands in a portfolio and five new clients are different measures, but together they explain the immediate practical problem: the founders needed colleagues. Their existing relationships had brought work to the door faster than anticipated. Starting an agency also meant learning how to build one.
The ambition Weiss describes is deliberately bounded: enough scale to serve substantial brands, with the founders still involved. His interest in mentoring and in adding colleagues with different experience belongs to that same project. Growth creates opportunities for people as well as room for accounts.
Learning to read the room, and the glass
Hospitality communications rewards a particular kind of attention. A restaurant has a menu and a chef, but also regulars, rituals and a neighborhood. A spirit has ingredients and a label, but bartenders decide how it reaches a glass. Weiss’s work repeatedly returns to these intermediaries: people who can turn a product into an experience someone else understands.
After attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, he and Curich offered observations on the drinks they had encountered. Their selection included simple serves, coffee cocktails, variations on established recipes, mezcal and inventive drinking vessels. The emphasis was practical: ingredients, presentation and ways a host could adapt an idea for an audience.
Even the vessel mattered. Something memorable at the table could travel onward in a photograph. There is a pleasing economy to that observation. The guest gets a drink; the person who stayed home gets curious. A good publicist can appreciate a glass for its contents and for the conversation it might start.
A hat with somewhere to go
One collaboration Weiss has singled out brought milliner Gigi Burris together with The Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua. The resulting hat collection celebrated Kapalua’s beauty and history. On LinkedIn, he described the satisfaction of seeing an idea become real and credited the people who helped the collaboration happen.
His description gives the work a tangible endpoint. An idea had become something a guest could wear. The resort supplied a place and a story; a designer supplied another way to experience both.
It is an appealing example because it can be understood without a marketing diagram. A traveler needs a hat. A hotel wants to be remembered. A designer brings a point of view. The interesting work lies in finding a connection worth making, then handling the many conversations required to produce it.
“One of the most rewarding parts of my job is bringing an idea to fruition.”
John Weiss, on the Kapalua and Gigi Burris collaboration
More skills around the same table
By 2022, the agency had expanded into digital advertising, affiliate marketing, brand strategy and creative work. Its assignments included brands such as La Maison du Chocolat and Brother’s Bond Bourbon. These additions changed what the team could offer after a conversation about publicity: ways to carry a brand’s story into other parts of its business.
Education was part of the expansion. Marketing specialists came in to discuss how communications fitted into a wider business plan. The agency also hired veteran journalist Alyssa Haak as director of media relations. Bringing a journalist into that role put editorial experience inside the team pitching the stories.
For Weiss, the pattern connects to his own career across agencies and an in-house role. Different vantage points have practical value. A colleague who understands a newsroom may ask a different question from one who manages digital advertising. Putting them in the same conversation gives an assignment more than one route forward.
Hotels need more than an opening date
The hospitality practice brought another set of connections. By 2023, new business included W Aspen, Nemacolin and The Ritz-Carlton, Portland. The agency also worked with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits on SGWS Top Shelf, an alliance providing selected suppliers with public relations and social media services. Hotels and drinks sit comfortably together on a guest’s itinerary; serving them requires distinct professional knowledge.
The Grand Lodge at Nemacolin offers a concrete example of the material a publicist receives. Its 2023 announcement described the transformation of the resort’s original lodge into an all-suite property, with 56 suites, butler service and new restaurants and bars. Weiss was the media contact. The task was to introduce a changed place while retaining its connection to the resort’s history.
The Ritz-Carlton, Portland opened on October 31, 2023, with Weiss again listed as a media contact. Its 251 rooms occupied a tower whose interiors drew on Pacific Northwest landscapes. For a communications team, those details supply possible beginnings: architecture, food, local makers, the city itself. An opening date gives the story urgency. The place must supply the substance.
The team behind the guest list
In 2024, CURICH | WEISS received Hospitality Agency of the Year at The PR Net Next Gen Awards. The cited work crossed several categories, including Delola, Wild Scottish Gin, SunnyD Vodka Seltzer and hotel openings. It was recognition of an agency’s collective output, with Weiss and Curich named as its founders.
The agency’s leadership now includes Amplify Partners’ Greg Calejo and Daniel Benedict, alongside partner David Mandler and other senior colleagues. Its stated approach favors substantive relationships and opportunities suited to a client’s audience. The range of people involved is visible in an event photograph: four partners together, away from the quieter setting of the founders’ portrait.
There is a less glamorous view of agency life in a September 2026 recruitment notice. An office coordinator would manage practical operations while learning client service, joining training and assisting account teams. The offer included a path toward account work. Someone still has to organize the office while the campaigns are being organized.
The quieter appointment
Weiss has also volunteered with School on Wheels, tutoring children experiencing homelessness in California. That commitment appeared in accounts of the agency in both 2022 and 2024. It gives a separate, specific expression to his interest in helping other people develop.
Mentoring a colleague and tutoring a child are different responsibilities. Both make room for another person’s progress. In a career whose public record contains hotel launches, drinks brands and award ceremonies, the tutoring deserves its own space. It is a use of time that reaches beyond the next client assignment.
In February 2026, CURICH WEISS AMPLIFY won PR Agency of the Year at the Icons of Whisky America awards, announced in Louisville. The honor returns the story to spirits, the category that supplied the founders’ first account. The business has added capabilities and colleagues; those early industry connections remain part of its work.
Back at A Voce in 2009, the immediate business was dinner. A chef had something to serve, a writer had something to ask and Weiss had helped bring them together. The scale of his work has changed considerably. There is still value in a well-made introduction, followed by something worth staying for.