Michon Martin and the art of getting a city to yes

Before Formula One could send racing cars down the Las Vegas Strip, Emily Prazer needed a telephone number. The advice she received was specific: call Michon Martin. It is a pleasingly unglamorous beginning for a project associated with speed, money and floodlights. Somewhere before the starting grid, there had to be a conversation.

Martin and Prazer went on to make the case to casinos for a race through the city. The proposition startled even Martin. Cars hurtling past hotels at roughly 200 miles an hour were a considerable addition to the usual tourism brief. Yet the work that followed was familiar: find the people whose agreement matters, understand their interests, and give them a reason to join in.

That is a useful place to begin with Martin, now CEO of R&R Partners. Her career has passed through San Francisco prosecution, Nevada government and resort development. Advertising arrived later. Seen as a list of employers, it looks like a series of turns. Seen as an education in persuasion, it begins to look rather orderly.

A lawyer learns the rooms

A native Nevadan, Martin earned her law degree at the University of San Francisco. California’s bar records place her admission in December 1998. She worked as an assistant district attorney in San Francisco, including during Kamala Harris’s time as district attorney. Years later, remembering Harris addressing young lawyers, Martin described a room leaning forward to listen. She remembered the possibility of approaching familiar work differently.

Back in Nevada, she became chief deputy attorney general under Catherine Cortez Masto. Her responsibilities included the litigation division and advising state agencies. In a February 2013 legislative hearing, she appeared in support of anti-human-trafficking legislation. She also acknowledged the limits of the available statistics. It was a small but telling professional distinction: making a case did not require pretending every number was already known.

Governor Brian Sandoval appointed her general counsel in 2013. The job brought legal advice together with policy planning, legislative drafting and testimony. A governor’s idea travels through agencies, committees and competing obligations before it becomes something people experience. Martin worked along that route, where a persuasive sentence needs an administrative life after the speech is over.

One detail from those years deserves more attention than a grand title. In August 2013, Nevada’s Commission on Ethics recorded that Martin had asked for biweekly meetings with directors of agencies assigned to her. She wanted communication and stronger working relationships. A recurring appointment is a modest instrument. It is also a way to prevent the first serious conversation from occurring only when something has gone wrong.

In 2014, she briefed lawmakers on Nevada’s interactive gaming agreement with Delaware. The discussion concerned pooling participation while preserving each state’s rules. In March 2015, she explained that the governor’s school anti-bullying bill began with families describing their children’s experiences. Her presentation focused on giving schools a clearer definition. The two subjects were far apart; both demanded that an intention be translated into workable terms.

The phone call before the starting lights

After government came an executive role at Resorts World Las Vegas, where her responsibilities included public affairs and deputy general counsel. She joined R&R as president in May 2016. The move put her in a business whose work already combined advertising with the political and civic relationships surrounding it. For someone accustomed to policy and advocacy, there was plenty to recognize.

Formula One supplied a particularly vivid test. Prazer’s vision depended on racing along Las Vegas Boulevard. The city itself would be part of the experience, placing resorts and a sporting event in the same frame. Martin helped sell that possibility to the casinos. Their partnership made her legal and government background relevant to a project that, once televised, could look as though it had simply materialized.

The public meetings tell a slower story. In September 2023, Martin appeared before the Clark County Commission on behalf of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. She thanked commissioners for their questions and the concerns they had relayed from constituents. Those exchanges, she said, helped identify difficulties and answers people needed. The event’s preparation depended on feedback as well as enthusiasm.

At another update, she returned to communication with hospitality workers. This is the part of a race that a television director is unlikely to linger over. People still need to get to work. Residents need information. The more arresting the spectacle, the more ordinary questions it leaves somebody to answer. Martin’s presence at those meetings places her inside that practical work.

There is a temptation to tell stories like this as the triumph of one persuasive personality. Martin’s own accounts keep bringing other people into view. Prazer, casino partners, commissioners and staff all had parts to play. Her contribution was consequential precisely because the undertaking required so many contributions. A citywide event has very few useful solo acts.

A promotion with a familiar cast

In March 2025, R&R named Martin CEO, while Billy Vassiliadis moved to chairman. He had led the agency for decades. She had already spent nearly nine years as president. The transition therefore combined a new distribution of responsibility with an established working relationship, rather than asking an unfamiliar executive to discover the business from the reception desk onward.

Her remit covered creative, government affairs and digital work. The client roster included the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Brand USA, Discover Puerto Rico, Formula One, Allegiant Air and Boeing. Those assignments do not all ask the same questions. They do require a leader who can bring different kinds of expertise together without assuming that every problem should receive an identical answer.

At the handover, Martin described her job as bringing the agency’s varied minds to the client’s table. She included her own prosecutorial background among the unusual ingredients. It was a revealing choice of emphasis. Rather than presenting herself as the person with every answer, she described responsibility for assembling people capable of finding one.

“Of course we can do it!”

Michon Martin’s response to a challenge, in her agency biography

The confidence has a social side. Colleague David Panzarasa recalled a Zoom meeting with Martin, Michelle Mader and Vassiliadis that helped persuade him to join R&R. His description of Martin was welcoming, lively, caring and loud. Corporate praise can be decorous to the point of disappearance. The last adjective at least suggests someone you would notice joining the call.

Martin also describes a connection between selecting jurors and identifying an advertising audience. Both ask the advocate to consider whom they are addressing and how to make a case. “What it taught me was advocacy,” she says of her earlier work. The comparison explains her route into the business more plainly than a catalogue of leadership adjectives could.

Fabulous, with the paperwork attached

In September 2025, R&R and the tourism authority introduced “Welcome to Fabulous,” a new Las Vegas brand platform. The campaign borrowed the invitation already sitting on the city’s familiar sign. Martin spoke about visitor research and how a trip makes people feel. The public-facing work offered escape; behind it sat the less photogenic business of listening.

Her arrival at R&R came well after the agency created “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” That distinction matters to her story. She inherited a business with an established place in popular culture, then helped lead its next period of work. In February 2026, ADWEEK included her among its Most Powerful Women in Sports, recognizing her role in Las Vegas’s evolution as a sports destination.

There is some wit in how she talks about the place. Asked about an overused tourism word in a lightning round, she picked “iconic,” then allowed an exception for her own agency’s use of it. Asked about an activity, she recommended Red Rock Canyon, appreciating the proximity of striking nature to the Strip’s lights. Her Las Vegas has room for both the promotional image and the outing beyond it.

That range gives the public executive a little texture. She can argue for a large sporting ambition, joke about the vocabulary used to sell it, and point visitors toward a different part of the landscape. Her affection for the place emerges through particulars. A canyon recommendation tells you something a slogan about loving the city would leave untouched.

What the next decade should make possible

Martin marked ten years at R&R in June 2026. Her reflection centered on colleagues, shared work and a wish to keep learning. She wanted the next decade to be more meaningful. By August, she was publicly following construction progress on the Athletics’ stadium. The interest fits a career spent attending to projects while they are still becoming real.

Technology is another part of that unfinished work. In July 2026, she argued for AI that expands employees’ capabilities. She described R&R’s work on consumer segmentation and behavior prediction, framing the technology around what people might be able to accomplish with it. “What can AI help us do that wasn’t possible before?” is the question she wants asked. The performance claims belong to her; the ambition is clear.

Her continuing board service at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada keeps a connection to access to justice. Her LinkedIn profile also lists board service with the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. These are different commitments from running an agency, but they bring her back to institutions and communities beyond a client assignment.

Asked how sporting attention can endure, Martin returns to local relationships and a commitment to the community. It is a fitting concern for someone whose working life has included both a courtroom audience and a county commission. Las Vegas knows how to attract a crowd. Her career keeps returning to the conversations that give people a reason to stay involved.