Risa Heller Communications is expanding to the West Coast as the New York-based firm looks to bolster its influence in the media industry and better position itself to advise entertainment executives, studios, showrunners and production companies.
The firm’s newly opened Los Angeles office will be led by former Netflix executive Erika Masonhall, who will serve as managing director.
Masonhall has 20 years of experience in entertainment, tech, news and politics, advising high-profile public figures, senior executives and creative partners through complex issues and reputation challenges. She’s also executed a broad range of profile-raising proactive campaigns.
She spent five and a half years at Netflix, most recently leading communications across content, marketing and studio operations. Prior to that, she was Facebook’s head of news communications and NBC News’ vice president of communications. Masonhall started her career in Washington, D.C., as press secretary to Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT) during his tenure as an independent.
Founded in 2011 by Risa Heller, RHC represents a wide range of corporate, crisis, institutional, real estate and nonprofit clients across the country through high-stakes and high-profile issues. The company’s experts navigate front-page stories, develop proactive corporate strategies, collaborate with legal teams and outside counsel in litigation and investigations, support executive transitions, manage public affairs and issue advocacy campaigns.
With its speciality in crisis and reputation management, RHC already frequently works alongside personal reps, in-house comms teams, agents and lawyers to navigate complicated issues for their clients. It also maintains a deep bench of clients from academia, advocacy groups, hospitality, live events, philanthropy, start-ups, tech and other entities.
RHC’s current and former clients include executives such as former CNN president and RedBird IMI CEO Jeff Zucker and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell in his departure from the company, as well companies like Puck, the Texas Tribune, Activision Blizzard, Airbnb, DoorDash, Madison Square Garden, Match Group and Silverstein Properties.
