JD Estes has served the President of the United States, advised Presidential, Governor and statewide ballot initiative campaigns, worked at Exxon Mobil Corporation and The White House.
At Edelman, Mr. Estes leads some of Edelman’s largest clients and provides strategic direction and advisory counsel to clients facing public affairs issues. His focus area is on designing campaign-based initiatives in the energy and industrial sectors and is an expert in social and digital issue advocacy.
At ExxonMobil, Mr. Estes served as Digital Advocacy Lead, where he developed and managed the company’s corporate digital advocacy program. He also held various public and government affairs roles providing internal and external communications, crisis communication, issue management and media affairs supporting the upstream, downstream, chemical and corporate business lines.
Before ExxonMobil, he worked in the George W. Bush Administration in The White House Office of Public Affairs helping to build coalitions to support key presidential initiatives including tax cuts, agricultural, trade promotion authority and energy policy.
Mr. Estes previously served on the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential campaign as the Director of Coalitions in Ohio, one of the most critical states during the election. He also served on the Bush-Cheney 2000 Presidential campaign on the Strategy team helping to build the campaigns primary and general election state-by-state vote targets.
He began his career in Texas politics working for then Governor George W. Bush re-election campaign in Austin. Mr. Estes is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin and Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business in New Orleans.