PRWeek: Heather Podesta on Building Invariant Into a Multidisciplinary Powerhouse

Heather Podesta left a successful legal career 18 years ago to set up her own PR firm and has since significantly expanded its client base, staff and revenue.

by Noah Zuss

Founder Heather Podesta has raised Invariant from a bipartisan government relations startup agency into a multidisciplinary strategic comms and consulting firm with several industry verticals.

In 2007, Podesta founded independent PR agency Heather Podesta + Partners as a strategic communications firm with a tight scope. Podesta changed the firm’s name to Invariant in 2017 and has successfully transformed the firm into a top player on Capitol Hill.

Invariant built separate verticals in healthcare, food and agriculture, energy and environment, financial services, national security, technology, competition policy, transportation and infrastructure since the PR firm was founded, Podesta says.

The agency’s clients include Apple, Business Roundtable, Charles Schwab & Co., FedEx, H&R Block, McDonald’s, Marriott, Red Bull, Toyota and Salesforce. Invariant has also lobbied for large insurance companies including Prudential and New York Life.

Invariant undertakes “a mixture of strategic communications, public affairs and government relations, as well as business advisory work,” Podesta explains. It also offers crisis communications services.

Podesta sees revenue growth opportunities ahead by "braiding those pieces together for additional U.S. corporations.”

She launched Invariant because “I realized there was a need for smart substantive people in the communications and government relations space, and learned all the things not to do from my time at the law firm [Blank Rome],” she explains. “We have been growing ever since.”

Invariant currently provides communications services to more than 225 clients and all parts of the U.S. industrial base. The agency has expanded to 130 employees from 22 when it was launched, Podesta says.

She ventured into the unknown when she founded Heather Podesta + Partners, leaving behind a successful legal career as a partner in Washington DC at law firm Blank Rome. Podesta aimed to reach $10 million in revenue and achieved that goal in less than a decade.

“My goal for year one was I'll be really happy if I hit a million dollars [in revenue] and I think that in the first year we did $2.2 million,” she says.