Patrick O’Reilly and the small print of persuasion

Patrick O’Reilly was explaining a website. It was March 2, 2020, and the Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority’s board was being shown its redesigned public face. There were colors, images and multimedia. There were resources for schools and information about recreational opportunities. There was also a button for reporting trouble on conservation land, including illegal dumping. Public affairs had arrived at the unglamorous but useful question of what to do when somebody leaves rubbish where it does not belong.

O’Reilly walked the board through a fee estimator, connected social accounts and the difference between the old site and the new one. He described a more accessible, engaging website that could keep changing. Here was a small view of a larger career: helping an institution explain itself, then giving its audience something practical to do with the explanation.

The founder, president and CEO of OPR Communications works in a profession usually associated with statements, interviews and carefully arranged words. His Riverside firm’s assignments also involve the machinery of public life: land-use approvals, government relationships, contracts and community outreach. The words have to survive contact with a decision.

Washington, Wall Street, then Riverside

O’Reilly’s professional geography is wider than the address on his firm’s door. A Southern California native, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs. His background includes work with the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., and a Wall Street investor relations firm in New York. He later served as president of Stoorza Communications before opening OPR in 2001.

Politics, investors and public relations put an explanation before different judges. A political audience wants to know what a proposal means for its interests. An investor wants a reason to believe a company’s account of its prospects. A public audience may want a straightforward answer about what will happen nearby. O’Reilly’s earlier roles took him into all three professional worlds. They form a useful backdrop to the firm he went on to build.

His business settled in Riverside, with the Inland Empire recurring throughout its work. O’Reilly’s professional self-description emphasizes understanding a client’s industry and goals, doing research and paying attention to detail. The language is sober enough to survive a committee meeting. It also suggests why this kind of consultancy can be difficult to describe in a glamorous sentence: much of the useful work happens before anyone has a microphone.

Running the firm also gives him a less visible set of responsibilities. As president and CEO, O’Reilly oversees daily operations, client satisfaction and the team delivering the work. The practice brings together executives, writers, designers and event planners. A government briefing and a public event call on different skills, even when both belong to the same campaign. His role includes keeping that work connected to the client’s objective. It is the operational side of the founder’s story: the company has to organize its own people before it can help an organization communicate with anyone else. The responsibility extends well beyond composing a statement.

Twenty years, one municipal argument

Consider a waste collection agreement in Banning. Waste Management wanted another 20 years with the city. It also sought a rate increase to cover operational costs associated with new state requirements. A longer contract and a higher bill are a demanding double act. The audience has perfectly good reasons to examine both.

OPR helped develop the explanation, set out the proposed benefits to the city and prepare executives for the negotiation. The firm also worked on relationships with newly appointed council members who needed to become familiar with the company and the service. The argument connected the requested increase with equipment and services needed to meet state mandates. Banning’s council unanimously approved the agreement.

The episode gives O’Reilly’s business a clear scale. Twenty years is a long consequence for a communications assignment. The explanation has to fit an actual service, an actual cost and the public body making the decision. A polished phrase has limited usefulness if the next question concerns the machinery it will pay for.

Another assignment, for Carson Companies in Jurupa Valley, involved the approval process for an industrial development. OPR’s work included community outreach, visual explanations of the project and meetings with officials and residents. It also involved coordinating labor support at public hearings. The planning commission approved the project 4-0, with one member absent; the city council’s approval was unanimous.

These are examples of the firm’s work, with clients, officials and community participants all playing their parts. They help explain the professional territory O’Reilly chose: places where a company’s plans must be discussed with people who have their own interests, authority and questions. Calling it communications is accurate. It leaves a fair amount of the furniture out of the room.

A government has more than one story

OPR’s work with the Morongo Band of Mission Indians required a different frame. The client was a sovereign tribal government seeking to communicate its values and its position in economic and community life. Its audiences included other tribal governments, elected officials, business leaders, journalists and neighboring communities. A single corporate announcement would have been a cramped vessel for that assignment.

Working with the Tribal Council and executive staff, OPR developed five organizing pillars for the communications program and a 12-month media calendar. The proposed stories covered cultural events, philanthropy, government affairs and educational opportunities. The practical tasks included news releases, opinion pieces, presentations and speeches. Taken together, they made room for several aspects of the government’s work to be understood over time.

For a firm led by an international affairs graduate, this is a particularly interesting part of the portfolio. Sovereignty gives the relationship a political dimension alongside the media work. The assignment involved helping a government describe its activities to distinct audiences, each bringing a different relationship to the subject.

The answer before the interview

O’Reilly’s archived communications blog offers a smaller window into the methods surrounding that career. A March 2016 post on difficult interviews recommends rehearsing likely questions, reinforcing the principal messages and avoiding a defensive response. It warns against speculation about hypothetical events. The advice is practical enough to feel almost impolite to the fantasy of effortless public performance. Someone has to practice.

An April post considers the first statement issued during a crisis. Its concern is the interval when an organization is still establishing what happened but its audience already wants information. The recommended response is to explain the investigation and the action being taken while a fuller account is prepared. Speed and care have to share the same sentence.

A May post turns to local government’s use of social media. It discusses reaching residents who cannot attend public events and sharing videos so more people can follow what happened. The tools have changed since 2016. The access problem remains recognizable: a public meeting can be open and still be inconvenient for much of its public.

Read alongside the conservation website presentation, these posts show a recurring professional concern with the audience’s circumstances. What can be understood now? What needs more explanation? How can someone participate? The details are modest. Their accumulation gives the career its texture.

The San Diego chapter gets a sequel

In 2023, OPR acquired Danziger Public Relations and brought Derek Danziger in as president of its San Diego office. Danziger had opened his consultancy the previous year, after leadership roles at other communications firms. The agreement paired his San Diego relationships with OPR’s existing operation there. Political consultant Tom Shepard had joined OPR in 2021.

O’Reilly described the acquisition as a way to broaden the firm’s capabilities and service to clients. Danziger brought experience in development, energy, education and civic work. For a professional services business, that kind of growth arrives with a person’s accumulated relationships and judgment.

“expand our capabilities and better serve our clients’ needs”

Patrick O’Reilly, on the Danziger acquisition

The arrangement changed. Danziger returned to his independent consultancy in July 2024. By July 2026, he described continuing to work with OPR as a strategic partner. The sequence matters because it gives the expansion its full shape. A firm can acquire a business, work together under one roof and later collaborate through a different arrangement. Professional relationships can outlast the original job title.

Back to the people using the place

O’Reilly has another long-running connection to the region: he has served on the National Orange Show’s board since 2009. Alongside the client work sits a role in an Inland Empire institution with its own public, events and civic relationships. The same geography keeps returning, even as the assignments and organizational names change.

His firm has worked on regional planning outreach, including the Riverside County Integrated Project, which connected conservation, transportation, housing, economic and agricultural needs. That assignment called for public opinion research, briefings, town halls and materials people could encounter outside a government office. It is another example of a complicated institution needing several routes to its audience.

Return, then, to the conservation authority’s website. O’Reilly was showing a board how people might use what it had built: find a recreational opportunity, look up information for a school, calculate a fee, report a problem. After the presentations and the strategy comes that ordinary encounter. A person opens a page. Something becomes easier to understand. With luck, there is a useful button.