Former AP Chief for Europe, Africa and Middle East Named Managing Partner at Top NYC Communications Firm

Dan Perry Joins Thunder11 to Expand Firm’s Public Affairs, Technology, and Health Care Expertise, and to Tap Israel’s Pipeline of Pathbreaking Companies 

CommPRO Editorial Staff

Thunder11 has named Dan Perry, a longtime foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, as Managing Partner. 

Perry will focus on expanding the C-level strategic communications firm’s expertise in public affairs, tech innovation, sustainability and health care. From a base in Tel Aviv, a major global innovation hub, he will serve as a gateway to the myriad Israeli companies whose pathbreaking technologies are looking to gain awareness around the world.

Perry joins a leadership that includes Senior Partner Marco Greenberg and Creative Partner Liel Leibovitz as well as Ryan Birchmeier, VP of Media Relations.

Thunder11 already offers its clients a broad range of capabilities from messaging and brand identity to thought leadership, content creation, crisis and issues management and communications and sales force training. The firm was recognized last year as “Boutique PR Firm of the Year” at the Platinum PR Awards and, in 2020, was named to the Agency Elite Top 100 list of leading US communications agencies. 

"We are elated to have Dan join us as managing partner and take Thunder11 and our clients to a new level," said  Greenberg. "The practice of effective communications, in a genuine and thoughtful way, has never been more important than right now, and boutiques like ours are honored to help lead the way."  

Greenberg, who penned this summer’s Wall Street Journal bestseller “Primitive: Tapping the Primal Drive That Powers the World's Most Successful People,” also founded and led the communications firm NYPR, where he represented Akamai Technologies for many years. He co-founded Thunder11 in 2007 with Leibovitz, an NYU communications professor, host of the award-winning podcast “Unorthodox” and an author whose works include “A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen” and “Stan Lee: A Life in Comics.” 

In his work for Thunder11, Perry will help oversee and optimize operations and client service, pursue global partnerships and aim to scale the business.

“As the world grows more complex and chaotic, strategic communications is key to cutting through the noise, telling stories that resonate and teasing out the essence,” Perry said. “I look forward to driving dramatic growth at Thunder11 while preserving the engine of excellence that always made it special: helping clients we believe in turbo-charge their business.”  

The firm’s clients have included democratic opposition groups in the Mideast and South America, universities and tech companies and venture capital firms. It has represented organizations such as AT&T, GSK, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, 1stDibs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, and helped guide several clients to exits, such as Datto which was sold to Vista Equity Partners, and HeyWire which was sold to Salesforce. It has worked for over six years with Northwell Health, New York’s largest employer which has treated more Covid patients than any other institution. Several clients, such as UBQ Materials, have been named to Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies.

Thunder11’s name refers to Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan’s proposition that human history can be described in ten stages he called “thunders,” from “Paleolithic” to “Television.” The eleventh thunder is digital.

Perry, who holds a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University, had a decades-long career as a foreign correspondent. He led the Associated Press in the Caribbean, then in Europe and Africa from a London base, and most recently in the Middle East from a base in Cairo. He helped lead coverage that won Pulitzers and other prizes, and during the tumultuous years of the Second Palestinian Uprising was chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem. 

The author of two books about Israel, Perry has also written on politics and society for a range of publications including the New York Daily News, the Cairo Review of Foreign Affairs, and the Times of Israel. His interview subjects have ranged from Mikhail Gorbachev to Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and U2 frontman Bono. Since leaving AP in 2018 he has focused on business and technology projects.

Perry, who grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, is still a die-hard Phillies and Eagles fan, which he says “brought mostly misery, but also some of the finest moments there can be.”