Jonathan Rosen and the business of being heard

Jonathan Rosen’s first business plan had the reassuring modesty of a New York utility bill: earn enough to pay the rent. In 2005, he and Valerie Berlin started a two-person firm in an apartment. Rosen was 26. They knew politics, they knew the city’s tabloids, and they thought those skills might be useful to people who were trying to get something other than a candidate elected. At an early meeting, someone asked whether they were starting a public relations firm. Their answer, as he later remembered it, was “Yeah, I guess.”

It is a pleasingly unceremonious beginning for a business concerned with how things are presented. The category arrived after the work. There was no need for an elaborate theory of communications when the immediate theory of rent was so persuasive.

Rosen now leads Orchestra, a communications and marketing company whose specialists work across brands, technology, public affairs, philanthropy, sports and other fields. The distance between that apartment and the present company is considerable. Yet his career keeps returning to an ordinary human problem: having a point to make does not guarantee that anybody wishes to hear it.

The part of law school that stayed with him

Rosen earned a bachelor’s degree at Rutgers and a law degree at New York University. During his legal training, an impact case caught his interest through its public narrative. The media work appealed to him more than the technical legal process. In 2001, a connection through a lawyer brought him into Mark Green’s campaign for mayor of New York, where Berlin was chief of staff.

The two later worked together on New York’s Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. By the time they founded BerlinRosen, they had a working relationship forged in environments where the calendar is unforgiving and an audience can register its displeasure at the ballot box. A campaign provides a rather stern editor: the person you are trying to persuade.

That experience became a business proposition. Organizations and companies could use some of the urgency and discipline of political communications. Their subject might be a building, a public policy proposal or a business decision, but they still needed to understand who cared, what was at stake and why a message should matter beyond the person sending it.

Rosen’s legal education remained part of his background even as his work moved elsewhere. The useful question was the public one surrounding the argument. Who would hear it? What would they take from it? An elegant case in a room full of insiders could leave the rest of the city entirely unmoved.

The city hears back

New York politics gave Rosen a consequential stage. He was among the advisers who helped Bill de Blasio win the mayoralty in 2013, as de Blasio rose from a trailing position in the Democratic primary. Rosen remained at his firm rather than taking a job in City Hall. His influence continued outside the building.

That position drew scrutiny. BerlinRosen represented both political figures and private interests, including the developer Two Trees. During negotiations over the former Domino Sugar Factory site, those relationships made the firm’s place between government and business a subject of public attention. The city’s competing constituencies did not conveniently separate themselves into different folders.

The scrutiny also reached the mayor’s correspondence. In 2018, a state appeals court required disclosure of communications between City Hall and outside consultants, including Rosen; NY1 subsequently reported on the released emails. The episode belongs in his story because influence creates questions about access and accountability. A communications adviser can help shape public decisions while holding no elected office.

For someone whose work concerns reputation, this was a reminder that the adviser can become part of the argument. The audience has its own interests. It can ask who is speaking, whom they represent and what sits behind a carefully chosen sentence.

More people, more places to listen

By 2017, BerlinRosen had 110 employees and offices in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. That year Rosen was named to PRWeek’s 40 Under 40. The firm had traveled some distance from its original domestic floor plan, extending the campaign approach into a broader communications practice.

Selected snapshots: BerlinRosen in 2005 and 2017; the wider Orchestra network at its 2024 launch.

In January 2022, O2 Investment Partners announced an investment in BerlinRosen. The stated ambition included new services and geographies, stronger analytics, brand strategy and creative work. Outside capital supplied a different mechanism for expansion: build more capability by bringing businesses together as well as by hiring.

Orchestra was unveiled in March 2024 with eight firms and more than 600 employees across 12 cities in North America and Europe. BerlinRosen sat alongside Derris, Glen Echo Group, Inkhouse, M18, Message Lab, Onward and Brightmode. Rosen became CEO of the wider company; Berlin became executive chair. The collection put different kinds of expertise within the same organization.

Later that year, Civitas added public affairs and social-impact experience. Small Girls PR brought earned media, experiential and influencer capabilities. Its founder, Mallory Blair, remained CEO and became an Orchestra partner. The arrangement illustrates a practical feature of the expansion: buying expertise also means finding a place for the people who built it.

Rosen’s case for the company starts with an audience scattered across channels. A story may need to travel through journalism, social feeds, creators, paid distribution and the organization’s own publishing. The audience experiences the result, not the agency’s organizational chart. Internal divisions are of limited entertainment value to anyone outside the invoice.

“a great story well told”

Jonathan Rosen, on the currency of communications

His 2024 essay paired storytelling with measurement: test whether a message reaches the intended people, learn from what happens, and adjust. The proposition gives creative work a demanding companion. A sentence can be beautifully written and still fail to arrive where it needs to go.

A sports assignment shows the idea in another setting. In 2023, BerlinRosen worked with Josh Harris’s group on the purchase of the Washington Commanders. The communications emphasis included Harris’s commitment to on-field investment and reconnecting with fans. An ownership transaction has legal and financial machinery; supporters also want to know what it means for the team they follow.

A cookie box is also a campaign

Rosen’s interest in audiences extends to his own city. He co-founded NY Forever with fellow communications adviser Risa Heller in 2021. The initiative encouraged New Yorkers to commit to the city and connected that sentiment with ways to support nonprofit work. Its early supporters included public figures such as Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer.

The scale of the ambition was public, too. Rosen described a goal of getting half a million New Yorkers to sign a pledge and receive practical opportunities to help. That was a target, rather than a reported result. The important detail was the connection between an expression of belonging and something a person could do next.

Some of those next steps were deliciously concrete. NY Forever and New York Magazine collaborated on The Cookie Edit, a box whose proceeds supported restaurant workers through Restaurants Organizing, Advocating & Rebuilding, known as ROAR. Civic participation briefly acquired the happy advantage of being edible.

Another project supported YMCA summer camps. In June 2021, AT&T contributed $100,000 for STEAM day camps in Jamaica, Queens, and challenged others to match it. Here the public appeal ended in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics activities for children. A campaign could be judged by what it made possible.

These projects bring Rosen’s professional vocabulary down to neighborhood scale. A city is a story people tell about themselves, but it also consists of restaurants, schools, cultural institutions and families. Affection becomes more useful when someone gives it an address to visit or an activity to support.

The meeting inside the meeting

During a 2020 video interview, Rosen’s sons joined the conversation. He let them participate. The incident supplied a small domestic counterpoint to a career spent advising leaders: sometimes the people with the strongest claim on your attention are already in the room, and they have no interest in the agenda.

He described family life as a reason to set boundaries and remember that colleagues have responsibilities beyond work. Parents, friends, pets and other commitments all belong in the picture. His phrase “We are whole people” has the useful economy of an internal policy that someone might actually remember.

There is a related lesson in his long partnership with Berlin. He has described himself as action-oriented and driven, and her as more deliberate. He has also acknowledged the need to take criticism less personally. A founder can build a company by pushing; leading other capable people requires enough room to hear what comes back.

The next audience

In August 2025, David Plouffe joined Orchestra as a partner to co-lead its advisory practice with Josh Isay. Plouffe’s background in presidential campaigns, government and business made the appointment a continuation of a familiar idea: campaign judgment can be useful far beyond elections.

By April 2026, Orchestra reported $177 million in 2025 fees and ranked eighth in O’Dwyer’s PR firm rankings. Rosen’s comments about growth emphasized trust and identifying the actual business problem. The advisory relationship, in his account, needs enough candor to recommend a different course when circumstances demand it.

That same month, the Ad Council announced his election to its board. His public commitments also include the Brooklyn Museum and PR Council. The settings vary, from culture to industry to public service, but each involves institutions trying to reach people beyond their immediate circle.

The rent-sized beginning remains a useful way into Rosen’s story. It keeps the later scale attached to two people making a practical decision in New York. The firm grew, its audiences multiplied, and its founder acquired a larger responsibility for listening. There is still a person at the other end of the message, deciding whether to care.