About Me
Howdy. My name is Trey Pollard. I’m a strategic communications professional who just opened up my own practice in Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the last decade, my work in or with the media has taken me from Paris, Kentucky to Paris, France. Throughout my career, I’ve developed and implemented media and communications strategies for everything from high-profile, headline-generating, million-dollar fights on some of the most important federal legislation in decades to scrappy, grassroots efforts to sway small-town decision makers on the wonkiest of details — and, I’m proud to say, these strategies won, time and time again. Along the way, I’ve worn out my fair share of mobile phones and sneakers.
I recently completed eight years of service as the Deputy Communications Director and National Press Secretary for the Sierra Club. There, I was fortunate enough to work as the principal communications and media strategist for one of the world’s largest non-profit organizations.I led sweeping, long-term strategic communications planning, tackled crisis communications challenges, and developed rapid response efforts to ensure the organization leads its sector in media coverage, with regular appearances in national outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, Gawker, Time, MSNBC, and PBS as well as targeted state, local, and regional media. I managed a team of amazing fellow communicators engaged in some of the most important fights there are. We worked extremely hard, had a little fun, and won a lot of tough fights. Politico even deemed our Beyond Coal Campaign "the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign[...]maybe in the history of the environmental movement."
I landed at the Sierra Club after 3 years on Capitol Hill, serving as Communications Director for the great Congressman from Louisville, Kentucky, Representative John Yarmuth. There, I worked closely with the Congressman as he served as the key messaging liaison to Speaker Nancy Pelosi throughout the fight for health care reform from 2009 to 2010. In that role, the Congressman made more than 50 appearances on national television to help frame and respond to news on what will doubtlessly go down in history books as one of the most challenging, intense, and -- ultimately -- successful legislative efforts in modern history. Yarmuth also secured re-election despite historically negative results for his party, while his seat went on to be deemed by most analysts as "safe."
That's all since I left the journalism world, having worked as a reporter and photographer - both staff and freelance - for outlets in the US and South America, including time in Kentucky with the New York Observer's Politicker network covering the 2008 election.
I'm a classically-trained political scientist as well, with a Master's Degree specializing in American politics from the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs), where I also received undergraduate degrees in History and Political Science. During my academic experience, I served as an instructor of American politics and a teaching assistant in courses on Politics in the American South, while also studying at Oxford University.
I'm deeply reliant on music and sports of all kinds, with time served as a writer, critic, creator, athlete, coach, and - most reliably - fan. Highlights include the day I went to both the Georgia-Tennessee football game in Athens and Outkast's farewell gig in Centennial Olympic Park in 2014, the 2015 birthday I spent watching the Braves in DC and Prince in Baltimore, and the time the Sierra Club softball team CLAW clinched the 2014 Green League title. Plus, I've developed original soul, hip-hop and talk radio programming at three radio stations on two continents and worked as a writer and photographer covering boxing up and down the East Coast.
I started my own practice because, frankly, I needed a new challenge. Throughout my career to the present, I’ve worked with multi-national companies, regional and national advocacy organizations, federal elected officials, local elected officials, tech start-ups, small businesses, and more. It’s my goal to find clients in the public, private, and non-profit sectors who are thinking and acting creatively about equitable, inclusive solutions to the hardest problems — and who need a communications partner sharing that same spirit. If that’s you, I’d love to connect.
Thanks for visiting and thanks for reading.
If you’d like to learn more, I'll let the internet speak for me: