Josh Shultz and the Elephant in the Backyard

An elephant turns up in your backyard. You have just woken up. What do you do? Josh Shultz has used a version of that question in job interviews. It is an unusual way to begin a conversation about working at a creative agency, though a useful way to interrupt the polished account of strengths and weaknesses. The candidate must respond to something nobody put on the calendar.

Shultz wants to see how a person thinks and whether they connect. The question belongs to a founder whose career has repeatedly involved getting beyond the official description of things. A government office needs to communicate. A staffer has a life outside the office. A client has an audience that will not read something merely because someone worked hard on it.

He is now co-founder and co-CEO of NJI, a creative agency focused on public affairs. He also helped start FamousDC, the Washington publication that found stories among the people surrounding the famous people. Across those two ventures, attention is a recurring subject. So is the person you might miss while looking at the title on the door.

A Texan learns Washington’s other language

Shultz came to Washington from Texas. He attended Texas A&M University from 1997 to 2001, studying journalism. His early professional work took him into digital communications on Capitol Hill and at the National Republican Congressional Committee, where he served as a new-media director.

That background matters to the business he later built. NJI’s founders had experience inside a place where messages must survive both institutional procedure and public interpretation. They helped establish early digital media operations serving the House of Representatives. The work required an understanding of the machinery of government as well as the developing machinery of online communication.

In 2007, Shultz and Nathan Imperiale founded NJI. They saw room for a creative agency serving corporations, trade associations and nonprofits with public affairs needs. The difficulty was familiar: complicated material had to become something another person could understand and use. Knowing the subject was only part of the assignment. Giving someone a reason to stay with it was another.

Doris gets a place in the story

FamousDC approached attention from a more social direction. Shultz and co-founder Amos Snead began a site for Washington’s working population: the people who organized schedules, dealt with reporters, wrote messages and kept careers moving without necessarily appearing in the resulting photograph.

The founders initially remained anonymous. In December 2010, they revealed their identities. Shultz had been working in political digital communications; Snead had been a Capitol Hill press secretary. They knew the population they were writing about because they belonged to it.

Shultz explained the editorial instinct by putting Joe Biden beside Doris, the cashier at the Longworth House cafeteria. His point was that both deserved attention within their respective worlds. Washington’s hierarchy could remain intact while its definition of an interesting person grew a little wider.

The site made room for birthdays, interviews and the details of professional life that fall between a formal biography and an evening conversation. That choice gives Shultz’s publishing career its particular texture. He was interested in the community around power, including the people a conventional political celebrity story would walk past.

The blog grows up, a little

By August 2012, FamousDC was ready for new clothes. Shultz and Snead announced a redesign built by NJI, joining the founder’s publishing and agency worlds in one practical assignment. The refreshed site gave room to infographics, photography, video and interviews, with an interactive treatment of its weekend recommendations.

They also announced Morgan Gress as FamousDC’s first full-time editor. That was a meaningful change for a project powered by contributors with connections to Capitol Hill, the administration and K Street. A publication created around a social circle was developing the staff and presentation of a more organized enterprise.

The format kept changing. In June 2015, FamousDC announced a political and public affairs Snapchat channel, aiming to offer weekly glimpses behind the legislative process. Shultz described a desire to explain Washington’s debates and the people driving them to a younger generation. It was a small, dated example of a durable communications problem: an audience changes its habits, and the people trying to reach it must notice.

The Aggie at the office

Shultz’s Texas connection was more than biographical shorthand. In November 2012, FamousDC documented his enthusiasm for Texas A&M football through a workplace prank involving Alabama decorations at his desk. The accompanying account dressed the episode in the language of a mock operation. College football had, briefly, acquired the theatrical seriousness of Washington business.

There was a wager with Snead too. The loser of the Texas A&M-Alabama game would wear the other side’s college gear at a FamousDC party. An update told Snead to enjoy wearing Texas A&M colors.

It is a modest anecdote, and better for staying modest. It gives the founder something more specific than a claim that he has a sense of humor. He has an alma mater, a rival supporter within his own venture and an audience willing to follow the joke. The publication’s account of Washington made room for that sort of ordinary attachment alongside everyone’s professional importance.

Two founders, room for other leaders

The NJI partnership grew around complementary interests. Shultz has described his emphasis on people management and client service, while Imperiale concentrated on pushing creative work forward. An early obstacle was geography: Shultz was headed to Chicago. Imperiale persuaded him that a team already working across locations could include a founder there too.

The partnership endured, but the titles changed. In January 2023, NJI announced that Shultz would move from president to co-CEO alongside Imperiale. Lara Kline, the agency’s first chief strategy officer, became president. Shared leadership had existed before the formal arrangement took that name.

Kline had helped lead NJI’s expansion to London and Singapore. Her promotion put responsibility for the client portfolio and creative offerings with a leader who had already shaped that growth. It also illustrates a less photogenic part of a founder’s career: making room for someone else to take over a role that once belonged to you.

Recognition followed. CEO Monthly honored Shultz and Imperiale as Advertising CEOs of the Year for Virginia in 2023 and recognized them again for advertising and brand development in 2024. Those awards sit beside a longer list of people doing the agency’s work. A shared top job still requires an organization underneath it.

An agency with a host’s instincts

Service at NJI has a deliberately hospitable vocabulary. Imperiale has discussed borrowing principles from hotels: efficiency, personal attention, accuracy and timeliness. Those are ordinary promises with demanding consequences. A client should not have to admire the agency’s internal effort in order to receive a useful result.

It is easy to see how that philosophy fits Shultz’s stated interest in relationships. The creative assignment and the experience of getting it done belong together. Someone can appreciate the finished film or website and still remember every awkward handoff along the way.

The office has offered more surprising forms of hospitality too. Shultz recalled three events in a former grain warehouse that included a sword swallower and a fire-breather. That is quite a departure from the standard tray of sandwiches.

There is quieter evidence of the agency’s appetite for variety. Its staff-led Spark Weeks have included visits to art exhibitions, a book discussion and a group debate about trends. Different colleagues lead the activities. The point is to make room for experiences beyond a person’s regular assignments. An agency needs work to deliver; it also needs people with something fresh to bring to that work.

Washington expertise, other postcodes

NJI opened in London in 2020 and Singapore in 2021. The London move followed a concrete invitation: an existing client offered a budget to establish a local presence. Shultz and Imperiale accepted, then had to find space, hire people and handle the financial and operational demands of working internationally.

In January 2025, the agency announced a Doha office. Ivanna Ruiz Garcia would lead the expansion, extending its work in the Middle East and North Africa. The move followed the agency’s Look Closer Qatar campaign, which had brought its creative approach into nation branding.

The geographical sequence makes a useful distinction visible. Expertise developed in Washington could travel, but local teams and leaders still mattered. Opening an office required people with knowledge of the place, not just a new address beneath the company name. Shultz’s founder story becomes a story of colleagues whose experience extends well beyond his own.

The next question is about speed

In April 2026, NJI launched NJI Studio, a creative practice spanning brand, film, digital and live experience. Kara Mask and Ryan Raybould would co-lead it. The agency described a model that brings disciplines together from the outset and uses AI to shorten production timelines while retaining human creative judgment.

“Speed without intention is just noise.”

Josh Shultz, April 2026

Shultz’s argument was about what a client should expect from a creative partner: adaptability, direct contact with the people making the work and responsibility through delivery. Faster tools increase the capacity to produce. They also make the decision about what to produce harder to avoid.

That concern connects to the earlier chapters. FamousDC found an audience by taking particular people seriously. NJI grew by applying creative work to particular public affairs problems. The elephant question asks a candidate to show something individual rather than recite a general account of competence.

There is a consistent interest here in getting close enough to understand the person on the receiving end. The candidate, the reader, the client, the colleague. After years of new platforms and new offices, Shultz is still asking what happens when the prepared answer runs out. The backyard has changed. The question remains worth asking.