Vice President
Pfeifle recently joined S4 Inc. in February 2009 to develop and implement communication and outreach strategies to help the company’s clients achieve their goals.
Before joining S4, Mr. Pfeifle served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Global Outreach at the White House where he was recognized as a leading spokesman, communication strategist and crisis management expert. Mr. Pfeifle led the successful communication effort to promote the president’s “surge” of U.S. forces into Iraq and international communication initiatives to de-legitimize al Qaeda, to stop Iran from enriching uranium, to denuclearize North Korea, to achieve fair and free trade agreements and to advocate the causes of freedom, liberty and human rights to those suffering under brutal dictatorships.
Mr. Pfeifle was previously Deputy Communications Director at the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2001 where he helped lay the groundwork for presidential, and other, elections. From 2001 to 2004, as press secretary and later as Communications Director for Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Mr. Pfeifle created messages to pass energy and conservation legislation and the president’s Healthy Forest Initiative. While at Interior, his official duties were quickly turned upside-down, when he experienced the violence of September 11th first-hand as one of the first communication advisors sent to Ground Zero in New York City.
Mr. Pfeifle took a second leave from Interior to become communications director for the 2004 Republican National Convention -- an event resulting in an immediate 13-point bounce in public polling for the president. The convention produced 3400 TV, print, radio and Internet interviews. The event took the Internet by storm, with a powerful online operation that attracted more than 40 million web visitors and the first-ever “Bloggers’ Corner” for web journalists. Recognizing the importance of Hispanic outreach, he started the first-ever daily Spanish-language press briefings at a national political convention.
In 2005, Mr. Pfeifle directed the Social Security Information Center at the U.S. Department of Treasury, leading the communication effort for the president’s arduous attempt to fix the Social Security system. Later that year, Mr. Pfeifle was assigned to the White House to focus on communication strategy for the Global War on Terror. He was also called shortly after for a short tour as a senior communications advisor for Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Mr. Pfeifle’s first professional work was as the manager of a tiny radio station in Wishek. Shortly after he became the marketing and advertising director of the Grand Forks Air Force Base newspaper and was a stringer and freelancer for The Associated Press and USA Today.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of North Dakota, is single and lives in the District of Columbia.
|