Craig Minassian is the chief communications and marketing officer of the

Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation (founded in 2001 as the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, and renamed in 2013 as the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation) is a nonprofit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. It was e ...

as well as a producer and the founder of the PR firm Minassian Media. During the presidency of

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

he served as assistant press secretary and director of television news in the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

Career

Minassian graduated from the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

in 1992. Having interned for various entertainment and sporting events during his studies, he joined

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

after college, working on programs such as Comic Relief,

Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher ''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...

and the organizing committee for

World Cup USA 94 The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States w ...

. Minassian's work on various campaigns led to his serving as assistant press secretary and director of television news in the White House for President

. Over the years, Minassian worked on the 1996 Clinton/Gore campaign as well as

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

's 2008 presidential campaign and served as a senior advisor to the

Democratic National Convention The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 ...

Committees in 2008 and 2012. At the end of Clinton's presidency, he returned to HBO to produce and develop programming and served as festival director of the

U.S. Comedy Arts Festival The Comedy Festival, formerly known as the US Comedy Arts Festival, was a comedy festival that ran from 1995 to 2008. The festival included stand-up comedy performances, appearances by the casts of television shows, and has a film component calle ...

. Minassian joined the Clinton Foundation in 2005, and founded the Minassian Media PR company in 2006. In 2010, Minassian was one of the organizers of the

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a gathering that took place on October 30, 2010, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The rally was led by Jon Stewart, host of the satirical news program ''The Daily Show'', and Stephen Colbert ...

. Minassian Media produced the live event portion of the event together with Chris Wayne, another veteran of Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign. Minassian is an executive producer, together with

Will Malnati William Marc Malnati (born April 28, 1985) is an American restaurateur, producer, actor and entrepreneur. Early life Will Malnati is originally from Northbrook, Illinois. He attended New Trier High School and Cornell University. Malnati grew up ...

, of Bill Clinton's

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

iHeartMedia iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...

's iHeartPodcast network titled ''Why am I Telling You This''. Clients of his PR firm include the Clinton Global Initiative,

Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programming ...

's ''

The Daily Show ''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form from ...

'', Bloomberg and the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

Personal life

Asked how he got his start in his career, Minassian told ''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

'': "My mom served in

Ralph Bunche Ralph Johnson Bunche (; August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize f ...

’s office at the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

and on the support staff for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the Congo. She instilled in me a real interest in the role the U.S., international institutions and the media play in the world. I was also fascinated by comedy that put society through a provocative, honest prism such as '

M*A*S*H ''M*A*S*H'' (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American media franchise consisting of a series of novels, a film, several television series, plays, and other properties, and based on the semi-autobiographical fiction of Richard Hooker. The ...

.'" Minassian is married to Shawna Shepherd, a producer on ''

''; they had a daughter in 2014.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Minassian, Craig American public relations people American press secretaries Clinton administration personnel Year of birth missing (living people) Living people

Career

Personal life

Further reading

References

External links