Chris Wailes
VP, National Media Relations
Pierpont Communications

Christopher Wailes is a nationally recognized media relations counselor and currently directs the national and trade press editorial strategy for a diverse client base at Pierpont Communications in Houston. Chris creates, implements and manages print, broadcast and online campaigns that establish brand messages via executive thought leadership platforms for clients in energy, law, technology and consumer goods. Chris adamantly believes that advertising sells products, but public relations creates the brand.

For three decades, Chris has gone toe-to-toe with the country's A-list business and consumer media: The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Economist, Newsweek, NPR, Marketplace, CNBC, Nightline and the network and cable morning shows. Chris twice earned citations from the American Marketing Association for print and broadcast public relations campaigns of the year and in 2011 orchestrated what would become PR Week'scampaign of the year for his work taking a platoon of forgotten Vietnam veterans from no recognition to a White House Rose Garden ceremony with President Obama.

Prior to his current tenure in Houston, Chris was the senior media strategist for Weber Shandwick's D.C.-based technology practice. Simultaneously, he orchestrated media campaigns for three industries under fire: Napster versus the recording industry over the legality of peer-to-peer file sharing; corporate America's employer-employee privacy battle over personal technology in the workplace; and a worldwide call for U.S. airlines and airports to change security practices following Sept. 11.