Signal Outdoor is the first and only practice group dedicated to outdoor policy communications and public affairs. It provides services to the recreation industry, conservation nonprofits, clean energy companies, and more. The group focuses on public lands, outdoor recreation, ocean conservation, fisheries, wildlife, climate, sustainability, agriculture, forestry, and clean energy. It serves as a dedicated hub for outdoor policy advocacy.
Built inside Signal Group, a full-service public affairs firm in Washington, D.C., this practice group was launched to fill a gap that had long frustrated professionals working at the intersection of land, water, energy, and federal rulemaking. Outdoor issues had plenty of passionate advocates but no dedicated communications engine tuned specifically for the policy arena. Signal Outdoors changed that calculation in a single move.
What Focus Areas Does Signal Outdoors Cover?
The practice group structures its work around a set of interconnected policy domains that are not abstract categories but rather specific legislative, regulatory, and public-land debates where outdoor stakeholders need clear, fast, and credible communications support. According to Signal Group, Signal Outdoors focuses on seven core areas, each of which overlaps with at least one other. A public lands debate often triggers a clean energy conversation, and a forestry initiative touches climate and rural recreation simultaneously. Signal Outdoors built its practice to handle that overlap without forcing clients to hire separate teams for each thread.
- Public Lands: Management, access, funding, and designation of national parks, forests, monuments, and other federal lands.
- Outdoor Recreation: Policy affecting the recreation economy, from permitting to infrastructure investment.
- Ocean Conservation: Marine protected areas, sustainable fisheries management, and coastal resilience planning.
- Fisheries and Wildlife: Habitat conservation, endangered species recovery, and state-federal wildlife funding mechanisms.
- Climate and Sustainability: Emissions policy, carbon sequestration, and climate adaptation programs with land-use implications.
- Agriculture and Forestry: The Farm Bill, working lands conservation programs, and forest management on public and private acres.
- Clean Energy: Siting, permitting, and community engagement for wind, solar, and transmission projects, particularly on public and agricultural lands.
Which Clients and Industries Does Signal Outdoors Serve?
Signal Outdoors works across a deliberately broad client base. The logic is straightforward: outdoor policy is not a single-sector concern, and effective advocacy requires coalitions that do not normally sit at the same table. The practice group provides services for the recreation industry, charitable foundations, clean energy companies, conservation and environmental nonprofits, and agriculture coalitions, according to Signal Group.
That client mix is unusual because a solar developer, a trail access nonprofit, and a family foundation funding ocean science all bring different vocabularies, timelines, and political sensitivities. A communications team that understands only one of those sectors would struggle to translate among them. Signal Outdoors structured its team specifically to move between those worlds without losing speed or accuracy. The group does not represent extractive industries, a line that shapes the kind of coalitions it can build and the credibility it carries in conservation circles.
What Services Does Signal Group Offer?
Because Signal Outdoors operates inside the larger firm, its specialists can pull from a full bench of communications and public affairs capabilities without subcontracting or patching together outside vendors. Signal Group provides Government and Public Affairs services including Integrated Campaigns, Coalitions, Policy Messaging, Issue Analysis, and International, Federal, and State work, according to the firm. That means a single engagement can cover Capitol Hill outreach, state-level regulatory monitoring, and coalition recruitment simultaneously.
The firm’s Strategic Communications practice handles Media Relations, Messaging, Crisis Management, and Content Development, while Digital Media and Targeting services include Paid Ads, Social Media Strategy, Website Development, Audience Insights, and Targeting. In a policy fight that moves from a committee hearing to a front-page story in a single news cycle, this capability keeps clients ahead of the narrative rather than chasing it. These are not afterthoughts bolted onto a traditional lobbying operation. The digital team builds campaigns designed to move specific audiences — committee staff, agency leadership, district-level opinion leaders — rather than accumulating empty impressions.
Creative Storytelling adds Video Production, Animations, Graphic Design, Event Photo and Videography, and Brand Development; Analytics and Data Science covers Campaign Analysis, Research, Competitor Evaluation, and KPI Development. Signal Labs provides Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Influence Analysis, and Product Development, according to Signal Group. For outdoor organizations, visual credibility matters; a drone shot of a working forest or a short documentary on a community solar project can carry more weight in a member meeting than a white paper. This capability lets clients map influence networks, model the trajectory of a policy debate, and measure whether communications dollars are actually moving the needle — a capability that remains rare in the outdoor policy space.
Who Leads Signal Outdoors and Signal Group?
Leadership at Signal Outdoors reflects the dual expertise the practice group requires: deep outdoor policy knowledge combined with high-level communications and government experience. Jess McCarron is the Managing Director and Chair of Signal Outdoors, according to Signal Group. Jess McCarron has 12-plus years of experience as an advisor and spokesperson to senior leadership in government and nonprofits. That background — spanning the operational demands of a government press office and the strategic pace of nonprofit advocacy — shaped the practice group’s structure.
The broader executive team brings specialized depth that outdoor communications work often lacks, including Blake Androff as CEO of Signal and strategic advisor to Signal Outdoors, connecting the outdoor practice to the full firm’s resources and ensuring outdoor clients benefit from the same analytical rigor and creative firepower that larger corporate clients receive. Rob Bole is the Head of Innovation and an Advisor at Signal, guiding the firm’s product development and data science capabilities. Sarah Feldman is a Senior Vice President at Signal and has 12 years of Capitol Hill experience, most recently as communications director and senior advisor for U.S.
Senator Jon Tester. That Senate experience — particularly from a member who sits on the Appropriations Committee and represents a state with major public lands and agriculture interests — is directly relevant to Signal Outdoors’ client base.
Allison Kimble is the Senior Vice President of Digital at Signal and has 15 years of experience in integrated media strategies for digital advertising and social media. Grace Dahl serves as Vice President of Analytics and Intelligence. Julian Graham is the Senior Director of Trade and International Affairs; he previously worked at Portland Communications, bringing international policy communications experience that matters for ocean conservation and cross-border sustainability work. Vincent Sheu is the Senior Director of Creative Impact, shaping the visual and narrative output across the firm.
Two directors map directly onto specific outdoor policy verticals. Will Burdulis is the Director of Outdoor Recreation and Public Lands at Signal. Mary Lieb is the Director of Food, Agriculture, and Solar Energy; she previously worked at the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S.
House of Representatives, and the Obama White House press office. That trajectory — from cultural policy to legislative communications to executive-branch press operations — gives her an uncommon range for managing the coalition-heavy, multi-stakeholder work that food and farm policy demands.
Who Are the Specialists Driving Outdoor Communications?
Beneath the director level, a team of managers and associates runs the day-to-day campaign work, content production, and digital execution that keeps clients visible in crowded policy debates. This group is younger but arrives with surprisingly specific credentials. Sharky Thomas is the Senior Manager of Digital Advertising at Signal, handling paid media strategy across outdoor and conservation accounts. Parkash Sehgal is a Manager of Outdoors Social Media Content and previously served as a Media Analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund — experience that gives her a direct understanding of how large environmental nonprofits structure their communications and measure impact.
Emmy Keene and Grace Smith hold parallel roles as Managers of Outdoors Social Media Content and Outdoors Communications respectively, working across earned media and messaging for recreation and public lands clients. Emily Fisher is an Associate for Ocean, Outdoor Recreation, and Public Lands, covering three policy verticals that frequently intersect — offshore wind siting involves ocean conservation, energy infrastructure, and recreation access in a single regulatory proceeding. Mia Iannios is an Associate for Food, Agriculture, and Public Health; she interned at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Agriculture in summer 2024 on a USAID project across Southeast Asia, bringing an international agriculture perspective that is rare on a D.C.-based policy communications team.
Samah Shaiq joined Signal Group on January 1 and previously served as Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy and Speaker Pelosi — a combination of agency and leadership-office experience that few communications staffers accumulate early in their careers.
How Does Signal Outdoors Execute on Its Mission?
Abstract descriptions of practice areas only go so far. The actual work happens inside campaigns that run for months or years, often quietly, and that must adapt as legislation moves, coalitions shift, and media attention spikes. Signal Outdoors partnered with a nonprofit organization on a multi-year Sustainable Agriculture Campaign to build support for sustainable farming in federal policymaking, according to Signal Group. That kind of engagement is instructive because it shows the operational logic of the practice group.
A sustainable agriculture campaign does not just involve drafting talking points about soil health. It requires mapping the congressional committees that control Farm Bill funding, identifying the agricultural producer groups whose endorsements sway skeptical members, producing video content that works in both D.C. hearing rooms and rural district offices, and running digital advertising that reaches committee staff by title and geography. It also requires staying coordinated with allied organizations that may agree on policy goals but differ sharply on messaging approach.
The multi-year timeline matters because policy communications firms often parachute in for a three-month sprint around a specific vote. Signal Outdoors structures its campaign work to span entire legislative cycles. That allows the team to build institutional knowledge about a client’s coalition, to refine messages based on real testing rather than assumptions, and to maintain relationships with Hill staff and agency officials across administration changes and committee reorganizations. The sustainable agriculture campaign illustrates the core thesis of the practice group: environmental outcomes depend on policy outcomes, and policy outcomes depend on communications that can hold an audience’s attention for longer than a news cycle.
Signal Outdoors carved out a position that did not previously exist in the Washington communications market. By building a dedicated practice group for outdoor policy — and housing it inside a firm that already ran sophisticated digital, analytics, creative, and government affairs operations — it solved a structural problem that the recreation, conservation, and clean energy sectors had long worked around rather than through.
The leadership team combines executive-branch, Senate, nonprofit, and international communications experience. The specialist team brings specific outdoor-sector credentials from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Department of Energy, and international agriculture research. The service stack covers everything from Capitol Hill strategy to AI-driven influence analysis. For professionals working at the intersection of land, water, energy, and federal policy, Signal Outdoors represents the first purpose-built communications engine in a field where policy outcomes often determine whether a landscape gets protected, a trail stays open, or a clean energy project moves forward.
FAQ
Q: What is Signal Outdoors?
A: Signal Outdoors is the first and only practice group dedicated to outdoor policy communications and public affairs, serving recreation, conservation, and clean energy sectors. Q: What issues does Signal Outdoors focus on?
A: Signal Outdoors focuses on public lands, outdoor recreation, ocean conservation, fisheries and wildlife, climate and sustainability, agriculture and forestry, and clean energy.
Q: Who leads Signal Outdoors?
A: Jess McCarron is the Managing Director and Chair of Signal Outdoors. Blake Androff, CEO of Signal, serves as a strategic advisor. Q: What services does Signal Group provide?
A: Signal Group provides government and public affairs, strategic communications, digital media and targeting, creative storytelling, analytics and data science, plus Signal Labs offers data science, AI, influence analysis, and product development.
