The Messina Group

In 2013, Jim Messina, who managed Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, and two former campaign staffers launched The Messina Group in Washington, D.C., starting as just three people in a borrowed, windowless office. The principles Messina set for the firm included taking on only fights it believes in, always having clients’ backs, being a long-term partner rather than just a consultant, letting its victories stand for themselves, and “grow or die.” Tara Corrigan, later chief operating officer, has been with the firm since it opened its doors in February 2013.⁠[1][1][2][3]

The firm took on campaign work abroad. In the 2015 UK general election, Messina advised David Cameron’s Conservatives; Tara Corrigan led political campaigns for TMG in six countries, including Cameron’s successful 2015 campaign, and opened the London office. Digital director Isabelle Wright ran digital strategy for the reelection campaigns of Cameron and of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.⁠[4][2][2][2]

In late 2017, TMG acquired Greenbrier, the crisis communications firm founded by Lane KasselmanLane KasselmanLane Kasselman is an American business executive and communications and public affairs adviser who led communications and public affairs for the Americas at Uber and later co-founded the crisis communications firm Greenbrier with Matt McKenna. He became chief business officer of the cryptocurrency company Blockchain.com in 2021, later its president, and since November 2025 has served as co-CEO alongside founder Peter Smith.Open the full entry and Matt McKennaMatt McKennaMatt McKenna is an American political and corporate communications adviser who served from 2007 to 2015 as spokesperson and senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton, the Clinton family and the Clinton Foundation, joined Uber in 2015 to run North American communications, and later co-founded the crisis communications firm Greenbrier with Lane Kasselman.Open the full entry, making it a division of the company. On January 17, 2018, TMG announced that it had opened a San Francisco office and merged with Greenbrier, with the San Francisco office serving start-up and technology clients in Silicon Valley; at the same time it named Tara Corrigan chief operating officer and head of the flagship Washington office, and Mark Medish, a former special assistant to President Clinton and US Treasury deputy assistant secretary, president, as it marked its fifth anniversary.⁠[5][5][2][2][2][2][2]

TMG acquired Segal Communications, a consumer technology and lifestyle public relations firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, to expand its West Coast presence rooted in its San Francisco office. The firm was founded in 2018 by the former broadcast journalist Sarah Segal.⁠[6][3][3][3]

TMG announced that it had become Fortius Global, a name derived from the Latin word for “stronger”; Messina remains chief executive. He said the firm was built to carry forward the innovation and culture of the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, that the Messina name had carried its mission for more than a decade, and that the new name reflects the firm it has become and its global ambitions. Fortius is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and lists offices in San Francisco, London, New York, Boston, Denver, Dallas and Brussels.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

Fortius operates as a single integrated advisory with five core practice areas: strategic advisory; policy, regulatory and geopolitical advisory; mergers and acquisitions; campaigns and coalitions; and communications. Greenbrier moved completely into it as the core communications practice. The firm spun out its US and international political campaign work into a wholly owned subsidiary, MCM², named after the last names of its four principals, Messina, Corrigan, Matsdorf and Mallet, which is opening an office in London alongside Fortius; the legal media firm Signal Interactive Media and the media buying firm Amplify keep their existing brands and operate independently of Fortius.⁠[7][7][7][7][4][7]

TMG describes itself as a full-service consulting firm that applies data-driven political campaign strategies in the corporate, advocacy and political spheres; its services include strategic advisory, campaign management, coalition building, mergers and acquisitions, strategic communications, crisis management, political and regulatory due diligence, opposition research, data analytics, opinion research, digital and creative strategy, media buying, and state and international political campaigns.⁠[8][8][8]

The leaders the firm says it has served include Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the United States, David Cameron and Theresa May in the United Kingdom, Mariano Rajoy in Spain, Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Greece, Olaf Scholz in Germany and Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico; Fortius says the team has helped elect more than 15 world leaders since 2013. Among corporate clients, the firm says it has worked for Uber, PillPack, Airbnb, Google, Delta Air Lines, Hutchison Whampoa and more than 300 others.⁠[8][8][7][9]

Its public case studies include Signal notifying more than 110 million unidentified class members in over 60 countries in the Takata bankruptcy litigation and its work on the Equifax data breach class action settlement; Greenbrier’s handling of an oversight with national security implications at the fitness app Strava and its effort to change the story when the media predicted the end of Instacart; and TMG’s work helping the online pharmacy startup PillPack against a powerful competitor.⁠[10][10][10][10][10]

Besides Greenbrier, the companies TMG owns or helped found include Signal Interactive Media, a legal media firm founded by Jim Messina and Matt Garretson that combines complex litigation expertise with techniques from commercial advertising and political organizing; Amplify, which buys and places advertising with TV, cable, radio and satellite outlets; and Segal Communications, acquired in 2021.⁠[11][11][11][11]

As of October 2026, Fortius Global’s leadership team includes CEO Jim Messina, COO Tara Corrigan, CFO Jim Urdanick, chief legal officer Heather King, and partners Nick Buis, Adrian Durbin, Lindsey Kerr, Liz Lowery, Ty Matsdorf, Abram Smith and Shannon Wheatman.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7][7]

Fortius Global: Official website: https://fortiusglobal.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7][12]

The Messina Group: Archived official website: https://themessinagroup.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fortiusglobal/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]