McGuireWoods Consulting is much more than a lobbying firm, and this is expertly showcased in our national education practice. Our government affairs and communications professionals have a unique depth of experience assisting clients in the full spectrum of issues relevant to education. Our team’s expertise ranges from early learning to higher education and workforce development, in both the public and private sector.
We offer a full suite of services that are uniquely tailored to our clients’ business goals and needs. Our education clients include Fortune 500 companies, major metropolitan school districts, state education associations, national charter school networks, colleges and universities, edtech startups and state and national nonprofits.
We assist clients in the below areas:
- Government relations and consulting
- We achieve your business goals through legislative and executive outreach, using strategy when needed, a giving plan, to elevate your organization and its goals.
- Political environment and policy issue analysis
- We help clients understand key state levers by providing comprehensive legislative and regulatory reports, identifying influential elected leaders and interest groups and evaluating the effectiveness of state association advocacy work.
- External affairs and brand management
- Our consultants liaise relationships between clients and key education and policy stakeholders, including industry associations, advocacy groups and prominent leaders.
- Market intelligence and business strategy
- Our ability to identify clients’ strengths, weaknesses and objectives allows us to use our expertise in policy, funding and market landscape to determine state-specific growth plans.
- Business development and procurement
- We introduce our clients to leading decisionmakers in the education policy space and identify state level procurement opportunities, not just in our footprint states, but across the country, using McGuireWoods Consulting’s proprietary procurement platform.
- Federal and state bill tracking and issue management
- Our team provides bill tracking and political analysis in all 50 states, enabling clients to effectively target states for engagement and prioritize resources.
- Communications and public relations
- Our consultants achieve public affairs objectives through developing strategic communications and issue campaign plans, as well as providing tactical execution support for digital media, crisis management, events, community engagement and grassroots support.
Led by Laura Novey, former Virginia secretary of education, our team includes two other state secretaries of education, Fran Bradford and Jim Dyke. In addition to Virginia, members of our team are based in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Washington, D.C. We attend national education and state legislative conferences where we are able to connect our clients with state officials, allowing our clients an opportunity to build relationships and brand awareness with governors, lieutenant governors, legislators, state superintendents and secretaries of education.
