Christopher Hayes has 25 years of experience in market entry, communications, quantitative research, cross-cultural training and coaching, foreign policy, politics, and marketing. Much of his experience has been focused on helping companies and organizations research, communicate, strategize, advocate, sell and enter new markets by building trust and reducing risk. After 15 years focused on international and market-entry work with Edelman, Chris is now a consultant and founder of a mental model research company.
He is the only four-time recipient of Edelman’s Global Chairman’s Award for Excellence (given once per year since 2003 among 6000 employees in 70 offices), a certified cross-cultural trainer, coach and strategist (Lewis Model) – with a particular focus on risk reduction and trust building. Chris has led five successful global-advocacy campaigns for Americans unlawfully detained in Algeria, Iran and Morocco and spent ten years consulting for the Panama Canal Authority, traveling to Panama nearly every four months. For the work in Panama, he and his team received perfect ten ratings for seven of the ten years of the contract. Chris worked for six years at The Rendon Group, implementing communications campaigns for corporations and governments in the Middle East and Asia. During the crisis in Kosovo, he developed and managed a six-language (Albanian, English, Greek, French, Russian, Serbian) news and information website, to counter Milosevic’s propaganda war.
As vice president of marketing for Primeshot.com, Chris managed a seven-person team executing the company’s public affairs, branding, advertising, and communications. He worked on several national and state political campaigns as issues director, press secretary or campaign manager.
As an undergraduate, Chris studied international relations and political science at George Mason University and legislative affairs as a graduate student at The George Washington University. An avid squash, chess player and New York Yankee fan, he is married with three children.
