Paul Andrew Equale

     Paul Equale is the President of Equale & Associates, a public affairs strategic counseling firm. The firm’s client base is diverse, and has included major corporations and trade associations in the financial services, entertainment, technology, energy, health care and legal sectors. 

     From 1977 until 1980 Mr. Equale was a legal advisor for Congressional Relations to the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Energy. From 1980 to 1982 he was the Director of Government Relations for the Travel Industry Association of America.  From 1982 until 2001, Mr. Equale served in a succession of senior roles at the Independent Insurance Agents of America, and in 1997 he was named Executive Vice President for Public Affairs, and then Chief Executive Officer.  In 2001 he founded Equale & Associates.

     Mr. Equale graduated cum laude from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and from the university’s law school.  He is a member of the Bar in New York, Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York Times, Business Week, Washington Almanac,and Insurance Review have named him as one of Washington’s most effective advocates and political operatives.  He appears frequently on CNBC, and other national news outlets. From 1998 until 2002 he was the senior on-air political analyst for Washington TV station News Channel 8.

      Mr. Equale served as Chairman of the Business Council of the Democratic National Committee in 2001 and 2002. In that role he was the key policy and finance liaison between the DNC and the nation's business community.  He is one of eight Washington political figures profiled in War Without Bloodshed: the Art of Politics, a book co-authored by Newsweek Contributing Editor Eleanor Clift and the late Tom Brazaitis, then Washington Bureau Chief of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  They wrote: “Equale transformed the IIAA from a sleepy one-issue office into a legislative affairs powerhouse.”
     He serves on the Advisory Board and is a frequent guest lecturer at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies of the  American University, and at the Graduate School of Political Management of the George Washington University.