Senior Vice President / Managing Director, Strategic Communications

A note from Nate Hermes, founder and principal of HermesPR:

I’m beginning conversations with senior leaders about joining HermesPR full time and taking responsibility for a substantial part of our client business. I’m taking the time to find the right person, with no fixed hiring deadline. I’m considering this hire in the senior vice president through managing director range, depending on experience and demonstrated capability.

We’ve built a deeply consultative, strategic communications firm working with companies advancing science, health and technology, including many venture-backed businesses bringing new innovations to market.

Our clients use deep tumor profiling to uncover treatment possibilities for people with rare or aggressive cancers. They build clinical AI to identify hidden heart disease and cardiovascular risk. They decode patterns in chronic disease to guide more personalized treatment. They’re bringing powered robotics into everyday movement, advocating for radical change in prescription drug economics, and introducing novel approaches to treating addiction and complex mental illness. 

Our work is increasingly reaching into world-leading institutions building entire ecosystems around scientific and technological progress.

In Europe, we advise a billion-pound venture builder turning university science into commercially-viable enterprises, and we work with a subset of those companies to advance their innovations into U.S. markets. Domestically we work with a modern, purpose-built medical city and innovation sector that brings major hospitals together with university research and a growing community of health, science and tech companies and investors.

I’ve deliberately built our business around deeply cerebral, challenging, complex communications work. We are routinely brought into consequential client decisions in shared service of advancing commercial goals, shaping reputational perception and establishing net new market categories. 

We are not building a conventional communications firm. I am not a conventional agency leader. I am a patient, long-horizon builder with unshakeable conviction in our approach to strategic communications. I am building this firm around people who take personal responsibility for solving difficult problems. This hire is central to our long-term vision. 

You’ll join at a point when your contribution can materially shape the firm we become. You’ll advise leaders bringing consequential science and technology into the world, with room to develop ideas and produce work you’re proud to put your name on. For an experienced practitioner who wants a substantial hand in building a firm, this is an opportunity to put your accumulated judgment behind something you believe deserves to exist.

You’ll lead several client accounts concurrently, directing assigned teams while personally developing and executing work across much of our portfolio. You’ll set program direction and decide how to deploy the team’s capabilities to deliver to the Hermes standard. Clients will rely on your counsel in consequential decisions. You’ll be accountable for the quality of our work and the strength of client relationships, with authority to address problems and redirect programs as circumstances demand.

More specifically: you must be able to write a difficult piece yourself and make another writer’s work substantially better. You will recognize when a draft needs a stronger underlying argument before anyone spends another hour polishing it. When the team struggles to secure interest from a major media outlet, you will wade into the work, help rethink the media strategy and build to an approach that earns a journalist’s attention. You’ll investigate why a program has stalled, including whether the underlying communications strategy still serves the client’s goals. If the research is thin or a media list lacks the precision the assignment demands, you’ll take responsibility for bringing it to standard. 

I’ll stay deeply involved in client counsel and the assignments where I can contribute most. I want you to sharpen my thinking and bring convictions of your own, prepared to work through disagreements in pursuit of our best work.

You’ll bring 15–20 years or more of communications experience across agency, independent consultancy or in-house settings, including substantial responsibility for leading teams while personally executing complex assignments. You’ll also bring strong health and/or science experience. 

Over the last several years, writing and media relations must have remained part of your own practice alongside strategy and client counsel. You’ll continue practicing here.

I’ll want to understand your personal contribution to recent assignments, from developing an argument through producing the finished work. Come prepared to discuss decisions you made and show work you authored. Your experience should demonstrate your ability to carry a difficult assignment through execution and lead others with the same command of the craft.

This is a demanding, full-time agency leadership role. Expect periods of intensive work and responsibilities extending beyond standard business hours, including occasional evenings and weekends. You’ll have latitude in how you organize your time, alongside accountability for meeting client commitments and sustaining the quality of our work.

We’re a distributed firm with anchors in New York and Florida, and I’m open to conversations with candidates across the country. Annual base salary ranges from $175,000 to $225,000, depending on experience and demonstrated capability, with additional commission opportunities for originating new client business. We offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental and vision coverage, a retirement plan, parental leave, short- and long-term disability insurance, and additional health and wellness resources.

If this sounds like work you want to take responsibility for, email me at View email address on click.appcast.io with a short note describing the communications programs you’ve led and a recent assignment you personally executed. Include your LinkedIn profile or résumé.

If you know someone who would thrive in this role, I’d welcome an introduction. Direct inquiries and personal referrals only, please. We are handling this search directly and are not engaging recruitment firms.