Podesta Group snags State Department deputy assistant secretary

Lobbying powerhouse the Podesta Group has hired State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Bay Fang, The Cable has learned.

The hire, set to be announced later today, adds to the firm’s expanding international practice, which has serviced clients ranging from the Georgian to Egyptian governments. 

“It’s a growing part of their practice,” Fang told The Cable, speaking of the firm’s role as an interlocutor between foreign governments and the United States. “So I’m talking to a lot of my former colleagues both in the press and at the State Department.”

Fang left her post at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs last month and started in earnest last Monday as a senior strategist.

At State, she traveled to Caucasus countries including Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia as well as the Balkans, working on cultural outreach and programs focusing on youth entrepreneurship in post-Soviet economies. She also served as a senior advisor for the State Department in southern Afghanistan and before that was the diplomatic correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.

Her addition to Podesta Group comes as the firm adds William Bohlen, the former director of communications for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as another senior strategist.

“The accelerated growth we’ve enjoyed within our international sector has shown no signs of slowing down,” CEO Kimberley Fritts said in a memo. “Bay and Will further cement the diplomatic experience, communications savvy and relationship advantage that only we can provide, and that our clients require to be successful on the world stage.”