Doug Poretz has been involved at the highest level of an organization’s public relations strategy for four decades. When he was 23 and a reporter for the Alexandria Gazette daily newspaper, he was asked by the Superintendent of the city’s public schools to create a public information program that would facilitate the peaceful integration of the schools. The effort was memorialized in the movie “Remember the Titans.” Since then, whether on an in-house or retained basis, he has worked at the C-suite level.

For the middle half of his career, he focused exclusively on investor relations and corporate communications, serving for ten years as part of senior management of three publicly owned companies, and for ten years as an investor relations consultant. He was an early believer in the growth of the technology community in the Greater Washington area, and played an active part in that growth having served in numerous leadership roles for such organizations as The Northern Virginia Roundtable and The Northern Virginia Technology Council. He has also been active in community affairs, among them: he helped create and serve on the steering and executive committees of NoVA HealthForce, and he was on the Board of Hospice of Northern Virginia Hospice (now Capital Hospice), for ten years, serving as Chairman of the Board for two.

His communications experience spans across all types of organizations, issues and industries. He has been involved with such major corporate events as IPOs, debt offerings, and Chapter 11 filings, as well as casino openings, product launches, economic development and branding campaigns. His perspective has been built from working with a broad range of clients including homebuilders, tech companies, retailers, associations, government agencies and non-profits from start-ups to multi-billion dollar multinationals.

In August 2000 he co-founded Qorvis Communications with partner Michael Petruzzello. The company was started with a unique business model built on a different premise than its competitors: communications strategy and execution should be seen as a value-add rather than a commodity (time). So the company tossed-out time sheets, and established a unique culture without “practice groups” or territorial silos. That, in turn, has given rise to a client-centric culture where all areas of expertise are integrated seamlessly versus a time sheet-driven culture where the priority is to consume hours. The Qorvis model has proven to be successful by every measure. It was featured in a column by Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein.

He has often been quoted as an authority and invited to speak before students of all levels as well as business and community groups. He received his BA in 1967 from The George Washington University, where he majored in Philosophy. He also went to law school at GWU on two occasions, having acquired some nominal information about contracts and a clear realization that he was not born to be a lawyer. He and his wife Eloise, who is known in her own right for her substantial contributions with a variety of community organizations, have been married for 33 years and are residents of Potomac, MD. They have one son, Edward, who is 25.

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