Dan McGinn prides himself on listening. Listening to the client. Listening to the consumer. Listening to the cultural discourse. That skill has helped him connect on a very personal level with corporate leaders around the world and with the pulse of the American public.

That is one reason why, for the past 20 years, CEOs, general counsels, university presidents, elected officials and media executives have turned to him for advice on some of the most complex and high-profile disputes of this era: the North American turnaround for General Motors, environmental issues for Texaco, Y2K for IBM, air contamination issues for the EPA, natural disasters for the Red Cross, and childhood obesity for the beverage industry.

McGinn specializes in risk and innovation, and has been studying their impact on corporate communications for decades. He has concluded that these two forces are causing a transformational change in how corporations and consumers connect. It is no longer about the message. It’s about the relationship.

This philosophy has helped build two highly successful communications firms. In 1987, McGinn started Ryan-McGinn as a one person office in Washington, DC, with, as he puts it, “no staff, no furniture, no clients, and no experience.” A decade later, the firm was on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing small businesses and ranked among the top 10 communications firms in the nation’s capital. Ryan-McGinn was purchased by the Interpublic Group in 1998.

In 2001, McGinn launched a second firm, The McGinn Group, with the idea of focusing exclusively on assisting premier organizations with their most complex risk and innovation issues. The meteoric rise of that company culminated in yet another alliance in 2007– this time, with Publicis Groupe’s Manning Selvage & Lee. Newly renamed McGinn MS&L, his firm not only retains the unique combination of top-tier professionals from media and law, government, marketing and public relations, but now has access to the international world-renowned public relations and marketing resources of MS&L.

As the expression goes, “he came from humble beginnings.” McGinn grew up in a small West Virginia town called Nitro. At the age of 17, he left home to serve as a page in the House of Representatives. He spent 15 years on Capitol Hill as an aide to several members of Congress and as a staff member of the Ways and Means Committee.

He is a graduate of Georgetown University. He and his wife, Deborah, reside in Del Ray, FL, with their beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Emma.