Kassy Perry had a daughter to beat. Kaitlin, about twelve at the time, had already ridden her round in a jump-off. Mother and daughter had walked the course together. The plan seemed settled. Then Kassy asked the jump crew to step out of their tent. She rode straight through it, trimmed two seconds from the clock and won. Family affection apparently did not include a promise to take the scenic route.
The story, which Kaitlin later recalled, is an unusually useful introduction to the founder of Perry Communications Group. It contains a calculation, a willingness to change the route and a competitive streak the family can laugh about afterward. It also contains another rider with her own ambitions. Over time, the daughter who competed against Kassy would become her colleague and then her managing partner.
Perry's working life has involved several changes of course. She studied science and literature, found broadcasting almost by accident, worked in California government and opened a Sacramento public affairs firm in 1996. Horses have accompanied the whole business. They make a useful corrective to the tidy career biography: alongside the titles and milestones sits someone quite prepared to ride through a tent.
The internship that rearranged the plan
At the University of California, Davis, Perry majored in biochemistry and English literature. That combination left room for more than one future. After graduation, she was undecided about further study and took an internship at Sacramento television station KCRA. She enjoyed the work. An apparently provisional choice became the beginning of a profession.
There is something reassuring about the absence of a master plan here. A student with two quite different academic interests did not need to reconcile them in an admissions essay before finding work she liked. The newsroom offered an immediate task: help turn material into something an audience could follow. The deadline would arrive whether the question of a lifelong vocation had been settled or not.
Her broadcast career included morning writing at KFBK radio, television production at KCRA, three years at KCPQ-TV in the Seattle-Tacoma area and a return to Sacramento for KCRA's Call 3 investigative unit. Later came communications work for Governor George Deukmejian and the role of deputy communications director under Governor Pete Wilson.
News production and government communications approach an interview from different sides. One side wants an intelligible account before airtime. The other must explain a decision and answer for it. Perry had worked in both settings before putting her name on an agency door. Her eventual business brought those experiences into the same working week: understanding what makes a story and understanding the institutions a story hopes to influence.
- 01The newsroomWriting, production, investigations
- 02The governor’s officeGovernment communications
- 03Her own firmPerry Communications Group · 1996
Sacramento has more than two sides
Public affairs gives a communicator an audience more complicated than a list of customers. A proposal can involve a company, a nonprofit, a committee, a regulator and people who disagree about what any of them should do. Perry's firm works on media relations, coalitions and digital advocacy for corporate and nonprofit clients. Its listed work reaches local, state and national audiences.
Her political experience matters here, but a party label explains only so much. In 2022, discussing the possibility of a change in congressional control, Perry described adapting clients' approaches to new committee leadership. She also pointed to divisions within parties, including the different factions in California's Democratic majority. A majority on paper does not guarantee agreement in a room.
“Some clients will switch to defense, others to offense,” she said. The language is practical. Before choosing the message, find out what decision is possible, who has power over it and whether the immediate task is to advance something or prevent it. A well-written statement cannot repair a mistaken reading of the situation.
This is the less photogenic part of communications. Coalitions require people to keep talking after the launch. Policy work requires attention when the subject has stopped being new. A founder with broadcasting experience can appreciate an arresting opening; a founder with government experience has reason to wonder what happens after everyone has watched it. Perry's career sits at that junction, where public attention meets the slower business of decisions.
Thirty years, and another Perry at the table
In April 2026, PCG marked its thirtieth anniversary. Across those years, the firm had worked with companies, nonprofits, industry associations and advocacy groups on issues including preservation, public safety and transportation. The anniversary offered a date to celebrate, but it also raised the ordinary founder's question: how does a business keep developing after it has acquired a history?
“This work is about people first,” Perry said at the anniversary. Her reflection included colleagues, clients and friends. In a professional-services firm, those relationships are part of what survives between assignments. Each project ends; the people involved may return with another problem, or bring someone else who needs help.
By then, the leadership table had changed. Kaitlin became managing partner in July 2025. She had begun her career at Miller Public Affairs Group before joining PCG as an account executive in 2016. Over nine years she took on more responsibility for clients, employees and operations. Her new title followed a working history inside the firm, as well as a much longer family history.
The announcement emphasized systems and communication standards alongside campaign work. Those details deserve room in a family-business story. It is easy to photograph a parent and child together; it is harder to show how responsibilities get assigned, how a team stays informed or how decisions get made under pressure. Those arrangements determine what working together actually feels like.
Kassy spoke about the pleasure of leading alongside her daughter. Their partnership now includes the unglamorous machinery that lets other people do their jobs. The rider who once found a faster route around a course is sharing leadership with someone whose responsibilities include making the daily route through the office clearer for everyone else.
“This work is about people first.”Kassy Perry · April 2026
A result you can read on a scoreboard
Perry's riding life has its own public record. The Pacific Coast Horse Shows Association's trophy history lists Dream Boy M and Kassy Perry as the 2023 winners of its amateur-owner 3-foot-6 hunter championship for riders thirty-six and over. The height and division matter: this is a particular competitive result, with a defined class and named winners.
In February 2025, results from the Northern Winter Classic I at Rancho Murieta placed Perry and Samba K first in the Children's/Adult Amateur Classic at three feet. On the same show's results, Kaitlin and Vanity RW led the Junior/Amateur Owner Hunter Classic. Mother and daughter still appeared on the same show schedule, with separate rounds to ride.
A scoreboard supplies a useful change of atmosphere after an anniversary announcement. It has little interest in a competitor's business title. It records a horse, a rider and an outcome. A founder can bring decades of experience to the arena and still have another class ahead of her. There is a pleasing lack of ceremony about that.
For Perry, the sport also reaches beyond her own entries. In a March 2026 opinion piece, she argued against UC Davis's decision to cut its NCAA equestrian program. She wrote as an alumna, former National Collegiate Equestrian Association advisory-board member and parent of a former Division I rider. Her argument centered on opportunities for women, scholarships and the institutional routes through which collegiate riding could grow.
She recalled riding on the UC Davis club team in 1979 and watching her daughter compete at Division I level in 2011. Her position was personal and explicit. Here the public affairs professional put her own name to a cause, asking an institution she knew to change direction.
Who gets room to grow
The same question of opportunity appears inside the agency, at a smaller scale. In June 2026, PCG promoted Laramie Hunter to senior account executive and Drake Sapigao to director of external affairs. Perry described a workplace where people could develop. The announcement assigned expanded responsibilities in client management, media outreach, partnerships and stakeholder engagement.
Promotion is an especially concrete form of a founder's stated values. It puts a title and a new set of obligations behind the encouraging words. Hunter would take a larger role in managing accounts; Sapigao would continue leading public affairs initiatives while strengthening external relationships. The work of maintaining a firm includes deciding who is ready to carry more of it.
Megan Yee's path offers another view. She joined PCG in 2019 and became a vice president in 2022. Her earlier jobs had included advertising sales and teaching English abroad. By September 2026, she was describing her own interest in helping newcomers learn the profession. Perry praised her ability to become part of a client's team. The emphasis was on the relationship she built, rather than a conventional political résumé.
For a founder who entered broadcasting through an internship, there is a familiar possibility in that kind of career: someone's previous job does not supply the whole answer about what they can do next. The useful questions concern attention, judgment and willingness to learn. An agency that hires across backgrounds then has to provide the setting in which those qualities become working skills.
Perry received a lifetime-achievement award from the Sacramento Public Relations Association in 2007. Nearly two decades later, the word “lifetime” has acquired an entertainingly premature ring. There is a thirtieth anniversary to mark, a daughter helping lead the firm, colleagues taking on larger jobs and another season's riding results. The biography keeps producing new entries.
Back in that childhood jump-off, Kaitlin had reason to think she knew the route her mother would take. Kassy found another one. Years later, their names share an agency leadership announcement and a horse-show results page. They have kept the competition, added a business partnership and given each other plenty to do. The family story has room for both a shared course walk and a very independent turn.