>John Ullyot
John Ullyot
When officials at the University of Virginia
summoned John Ullyot last year, he knew the
message about the school’s leadership turmoil
would have to be “carefully crafted.”
This was not his first “high-intensity en-
gagement.” Ullyot managed communications
for the Senate Armed Services Committee
during its investigation of torture and abuse
at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. In the pri-
vate sector, he advised DHL when the Ger-
man logistics company shuttered a hub in
Wilmington, Ohio, and infuriated the state’s
congressional delegation. But the crisis that
enveloped the University of Virginia was a
different animal.
A few days before Ullyot’s arrival in Char-
lottesville, the university’s board had sacked
President Teresa Sullivan, citing her un-
willingness to make “hard decisions” in the
face of dwindling resources. The ouster of
the popular president enraged students and
faculty members, and their protests made na-
tional news, including the front pages of The
Washington Post.
“Had we been brought in ahead of time,
we could have looked at whether or not [firing
Sullivan] was a good idea,” he says. “The best
reputation-management is to deal with some-
thing before it actually becomes a crisis…. In
this case, we were brought in after there had
been a precipitating incident.”
Eventually, the board of visitors decided to
reinstate Sullivan. “My task was to figure out
how to bring her back in a way that would pre-
serve the board’s strength and independence
and not have them look like they had been
pressured,” Ullyot says. The press excoriated
Rector Helen Dragas—an op-ed in The Post
described her as “divisive and tone-deaf”—
but she ultimately survived the fiasco.
Months later, Ullyot was at a memorial
service at Deerfield Academy in western Mas-
sachusetts when he was approached by Dave
Fuente, who had run with him on Deerfield’s
cross-country team. Fuente, a UVA graduate
and the chairman of New York City-based
SSA & Co., had seen Ullyot’s name in connec-
tion with the bungled ouster at the university
and noted that High Lantern Group, a subsid-
iary of SSA, specialized in crisis communica-
tions. Before long, Fuente had arranged for
Ullyot to meet with Daniel Casse, a managing
partner at the firm.
Earlier this month, Ullyot was named a
managing director at High Lantern Group.
The 44-year-old was most recently a senior
vice president with Hill + Knowlton Strate-
gies, where his clients included Medtronic,
DHL, Ford, Deloitte, medical-device-maker
Zimmer, Pfizer,EADS, and the Marine Corps.
A graduate of Harvard University, Ullyot
served as an intelligence officer in the Ma-
rines, where he was also a competitive skeet
shooter and a liaison in French Guyana (mer-
iting a medal from the French Foreign Le-
gion). Early in his career, he was a spokesman
for then-Sens. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., and
Arlen Specter, R-Pa., after which he worked
as vice president of corporate communica-
tions for AOL Europe. Ullyot later returned
to public service, serving as communications
director for two Senate committees, as dep-
uty chief of staff for then-Sen. John Warner,
R-Va., and as a national media spokesman at
the 2008 Republican National Convention in
St. Paul, Minn.
Christopher Snow Hopkins
https://www.mayerbrown.com/-/media/files/news/2013/03/people/files/national-journal-3-16-13/fileattachment/national-journal-3-16-13.pdf