Being famous sounds like a solution until you want to be famous for something else. An audience can become attached to the version of you it met first. An employer does much the same thing. Nicole Perez-Krueger has spent her working life around that awkward little problem: people are capable of changing faster than their reputations.
Her own first career offers a pleasing example. Before the actors, musicians and creators, there were fourth graders. She taught them. Then she took a temporary assistant job at Rogers & Cowan and discovered a profession she had never planned to enter.
“PR was never a goal but it became a passion,” she said in 2024. It is a useful origin for a publicist whose business now accommodates people with several occupations at once. A job title can be a convenient introduction. Left unattended, it can also become a rather small room.
A temporary job with a long afterlife
The temporary assistant became an agency executive. At Rogers & Cowan, Perez-Krueger rose to vice president. In 2011, she moved to PMK*BNC, joining its talent department as a vice president. Christina Aguilera, Lauren Conrad and Jewel were among the clients associated with her at the time.
Those names already complicated the tidy business of sorting people into professions. Music, television, fashion and publishing had plenty of shared corridors. A publicist working across them had to understand how the same person could matter to different audiences for different reasons. The introduction that works in one room might receive a polite, blank expression in the next.
By the time she left PMK*BNC, her title was executive vice president. There is a practical distinction between learning this business inside an established agency and deciding to put your own company behind the work. In the first arrangement, the institution supplies part of the introduction. In the second, you have to earn that introduction yourself.
Fourth-grade classroom → temporary agency assistant → executive → founder.
In 2019, she put a name on the door
Perez-Krueger launched align Public Relations in 2019. Matthew McConaughey, Lea Michele and Lauren Conrad were among the names attached to the new firm, and publicist Diandra Escamilla joined her. This was a new company with existing professional relationships, rather than a cold start with an empty address book.
The timing matters. That same year, PMK*BNC merged with Rogers & Cowan. While two familiar institutions were coming together, Perez-Krueger was establishing something of her own. Both choices make sense in a relationship business: combine resources, or give a particular way of working its own home.
At launch, the agency's proposition included publicity, branding and strategic networking. The last phrase is especially revealing. Knowing people is useful; knowing which introduction might help a particular career is a different skill. A thick contact list can still leave its owner with very little to say.
An early publicist roster can read like a guest list. It is more useful to read it as a collection of working obligations. Each name arrives with projects, deadlines and an idea of the future. Starting an agency means taking responsibility for keeping those futures moving while building a business that can support the work.
The people who arrived famous
In 2019, Perez-Krueger called Cait Bailey, then a freelance publicist, as she was building align. Bailey joined and took an interest in TikTok creators. The relationship would place the agency inside a new version of an old entertainment question: what happens after people start paying attention?
By 2021, align's creator clients included Charli and Dixie D'Amelio, Emma Chamberlain and Camila Coelho. Its publicists worked across print, digital coverage and broadcasting. These clients had already demonstrated that they could attract an audience on their own. An outside interview or magazine feature had to offer something beyond another place to post.
The distinction is easy to miss if fame is treated as a single number. A million people can recognize a face while a different audience knows almost nothing about the person attached to it. Publicity gives someone else a chance to ask questions, choose an angle and introduce that person in a new context.
There is an appealing irony here. The more directly a creator can speak to fans, the more interesting an independent conversation can become. A feed supplies familiarity. A profile can supply distance, surprise or an explanation of the work. Both can be useful, and they ask different things of the person appearing in them.
Building the team behind the introductions
In May 2024, Alex Schack joined align as a vice president from Narrative. Her roster included Bryce Dallas Howard and Anna Sawai. Perez-Krueger described the appointment as a way to add expertise and expand the firm's work with traditional film and television talent.
That hire makes the agency's direction easier to understand. Working with creators had broadened the business; film and television remained part of its plans. An actor, a podcast host and a digital creator might each want a different conversation, but the agency was building a staff capable of having all three.
By then, align had more than 50 employees, with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, plus staff in London. Its work extended across talent, music, books, lifestyle, brands and fashion positioning. This was a substantial organizational assignment for someone whose route into publicity began with a temporary job.
It also changes the founder's work. The publicist has clients to advise. The chief executive has colleagues to recruit, develop and trust. The quality of an introduction depends on the judgment of the person making it; growth puts that judgment in more hands.
“we no longer have the luxury of time”
Nicole Perez-Krueger, on the speed of digital news, 2024
There is a quieter measure of that growth, too: how easily a client can find the right person for a particular question. An agency can cover many fields on paper. Its daily usefulness depends on making that range feel manageable to the people whose work is already complicated enough.
The larger company, and the smaller decisions
In December 2025, the ADD Collective acquired an interest in align. The holding company brought together Blended Strategy Group and On Board Experiential, connecting publicity with other marketing capabilities. For Perez-Krueger, the agency she had founded was entering another organizational chapter.
The collective's stated model preserves each agency's leadership, identity and creative autonomy while sharing resources and encouraging collaboration. That is a consequential promise in a business where the client relationship is personal. More services can help, provided the client can still recognize the people doing the advising.
There is a familiar founder's calculation underneath the corporate language. Building independently gives you room to decide how work should be done. Joining a broader group offers access to people and capabilities that would take time to assemble yourself. The usefulness of the arrangement eventually shows up in ordinary decisions about individual projects.
A campaign may need an event, content production, social strategy or a combination of those things. The collective places those specialties within reach of one another. Whether the next introduction is to an editor or another agency team, the underlying question remains rather human: who would be useful to meet?
Perez-Krueger establishes align.
More than 50 employees; Schack joins as VP.
ADD Collective acquires an interest.
The next chapter needs its own introduction
By 2026, align appeared at No. 22 on Observer's PR Power List. The entry described a 39 percent increase in clients and a 55 percent expansion in headcount during 2025. Those figures measure an agency getting larger; they also imply many more relationships for its founder and staff to sustain.
The work covered several kinds of audience. Four client podcasts appeared in Spotify's global top ten for Wrapped 2025. The agency also handled media strategy around Sebastian Maniscalco's tour and the release of his Hulu special. The business had grown around voices as well as faces, and around projects that arrive on very different schedules.
In March 2026, Cody Simpson signed with align for publicity, with Lauren Morris-Ruff handling his music account. Simpson was returning to music after competitive swimming. Here was another career that made an untidy fit for a single label, and another practical reason for a publicity firm to understand more than one field.
Perez-Krueger has a connection to education beyond her original classroom: a University of Texas faculty CV records her among the industry visitors brought to the Moody College of Communication in spring 2024. The setting changes, but a professional visit still asks someone to explain how a working life actually works.
Her own career makes a good subject for that conversation. A temporary position became a profession; an executive role became a company; that company became part of a collective. Each stage required a fresh introduction. It is a useful qualification for helping other people outgrow the first sentence anyone learned about them.