General Manager, Washington, DC
202-772-6958 \ [email protected]
Carey Tarbell, general manager, also leads the firm’s financial services and crisis practice groups. She has more than 20 years’ experience as an issue-advocacy communications strategist and coalition manager for large corporations, associations, small businesses, community groups and non-profits. Carey’s unique expertise has helped various industries achieve their most important public policy objectives.
Carey works with a variety of our largest clients in the financial and technology space, and provides communications strategy for a large, multi-year coalition of financial services companies focused on interchange regulation. She has also worked closely with these entities on a multitude of reputation management issues. She specializes in helping these organizations shape their internal and public narrative as innovative leaders in technology and security.
Carey also has extensive experience in crisis communications. In recent years she has worked with a global corporate client on a highly publicized OIG investigation and assisted a major firearm manufacturer in its internal and external communications during a national recall. She has also worked for several years with a global auto manufacturer on contentious labor issues. Carey has related expertise in the areas of litigation communications and stakeholder engagement, including providing strategic communications counsel to Pokémon toys and Vinson & Elkins, Enron’s principal law firm.
Prior to joining VOX, Carey served as executive director of The National Journal’s Policy Council, an issue advocacy membership of nearly 100 leading organizations including corporations, trade associations, think tanks and nonprofits.
Earlier in her career, Carey served as executive vice president in the Washington, DC office of Powell Tate|Weber Shandwick. Over the span of her 13 year tenure with the firm she managed many of the firm’s largest and most complex clients. Highlights include managing a comprehensive issue advocacy campaign for a coalition of financial services companies seeking permanent reauthorization of federal preemption provisions in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Favorable legislation was enacted at the completion of the campaign.
Additionally, Carey coordinated a multi-year public affairs campaign for a large financial services coalition seeking reform of federal personal bankruptcy laws. A survey of congressional staff at the time named the reform effort one of the year’s most effective campaigns.
Carey began her public affairs career in the Public Law Policy division of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld. A Washington, D.C. native, she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from George Mason University.
