Lobbying World: Top Schumer aide heads to Microsoft

Gerry Petrella, a longtime aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), joined Microsoft as general manager for U.S. public policy. Petrella served as Schumer’s policy director, where he helped negotiate just about all of the major bills from last Congress, including the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act. 

“They wouldn’t have happened without Gerry Petrella. That is about the greatest compliment you can pay to someone,” Schumer said on the Senate floor in March. 

Aaron Cummings, former chief of staff to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), joined Crowell & Moring as co-chair of the firm’s government affairs group alongside former Schumer aide Jim Flood. Cummings served as Grassley’s top aide since 2019 and previously was chief constitution counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Jared Soncrant joined Invariant as a senior manager. Soncrant most recently served as legislative assistant to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). 

TikTok hired Latoya Veal to its policy communications team. Veal previously served as a spokesperson for former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and communications director for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

The U.S. Cannabis Council named Edward Conklin as its new executive director and David Culver as senior vice president of public affairs. Conklin comes from Curaleaf, where he was senior vice president of government relations, while Culver was vice president of government relations at Canopy Growth Corp.

Deema Tarazi joined Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as a senior policy adviser and counsel. Tarazi previously was a senior associate at Chamber Hill Strategies and was deputy director of federal affairs for public health at March of Dimes. 

Strategic communications firms Subject Matter and Kivvit merged to become Subject Matter+Kivvit. The firms said they will become one of the largest public relations and strategy companies in the nation. Subject Matter CEO Nicole Cornish will stay on as the chief executive. 

Lobbying World documents the top lobbying hires in the nation’s capital every week.