OUR TAILORED AND TARGETED APPROACH
Highland Advocacy Group provides high-level, tailored service to our clients. We don’t believe in cookie-cutter approaches to our clients’ policy priorities or opportunities. We listen intently, determine the most effective and efficient solution together and then get to work on it. We will not simply recommend a bundle of tactics, nor do we bill by the hour. We employ a sophisticated, client-first approach.
Our foundational belief is that political power comes from the home states and districts of policy makers of all levels. We have a unique level of understanding of the power of constituents’ voices and concerns and their impact on the policy process. Whether it’s online or off, we harness that power and tap into it for our clients.
Where high tech meets high touch.
At Highland Advocacy we seamlessly blend online and offline advocacy tactics.
High Touch
Advocacy...We offer a bipartisan network
of more than 500 veteran political and public affairs operatives.Data
Analytics...We lean into
the latest data analytics and modeling to target the right audiences.Online Recruitment
And Mobilization...Our Sophisticated Advertising
techniques identify, recruit and mobilize supporters online.MEET JOHN DUNAGAN
John Dunagan is the founder and president of Highland Advocacy Group.
With more than 20 years of professional experience in corporate, political and nonprofit campaign strategy and implementation, John’s clients benefit from his hard-earned expertise in recruiting and mobilizing advocates by seamlessly integrating online and offline approaches to recruit and activate stakeholders on policy issues.
John maintains a national, bipartisan field network of more than 500 operatives, built over the course of his career. By leveraging this network, John allows his clients to extend their policy battlefield to every state and Congressional District in the country. He merges his grassroots approach with a keen understanding of the emerging field of data analytics for the purposes of advocate modeling and mobilization.
Prior to launching Highland Advocacy Group, John was a Senior Vice President at both VOX Global and DDC Advocacy and a founding principal of CrossLink Strategy Group. While at VOX, he developed and ran the firm’s Grassroots and Grasstops Practice Group.
John served as the executive director of the Bush-Cheney ’04 re-election campaign in Michigan, where he managed and executed statewide grassroots, communications, coalition and legal strategies in a key battleground state. John has served as a vice president at the public affairs firms Edelman and Powell Tate where he managed national and statewide issue campaigns.
John frequently lectures on topics ranging from grassroots lobbying strategy to earned media and political campaign management for organizations such as the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and AMPAC. He has been featured on XM Radio and quoted in publications such as Roll Call, The Detroit News, Politics Magazine, Daily Caller, and TownHall.com.
John graduated Cum Laude from the State University of New York at Oswego. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his three children.
Why Highland Advocacy Group?
The name Highland carries special importance to us for several reasons. John Dunagan grew up in the Hudson Valley in New York not far from the Hudson Highlands.
The Highlands are the mountains on both sides of the Hudson River in New York between Newburgh Bay and Haverstraw Bay which form the New York and New Jersey Highlands.
Henry Hudson and his crew on the Half Moon were the first Europeans to see the Highlands when they explored the river in 1609.
The Highlands became strategically important for General Washington during the Revolutionary War when it was crucial for his Continental Army to hold the river valley and prevent the British from cutting New England off from the rest of the colonies. During the War, to prevent British shipping from using the river, the Hudson River Chain was forged at an iron works in Orange County. From 1778 to 1782, the chain was stretched across the river from Fort Clinton at West Point. The site of the fort is today the easternmost point of the grounds of the US Military Academy (West Point).
Highland Advocacy’s logo embodies the point where the Hudson makes this sharp bend and where the River Chain was placed.
If you have ever taken Amtrak or Metro North between Albany and Manhattan, you know how breathtakingly beautiful this part of the country is.
Finally, the original name of the most successful sports franchise in American history, the 27-time world champion (and counting!), New York Yankees, was the Highlanders way back in 1903!