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Before she advised companies on multibillion-dollar mergers, Joele Frank worked as a biochemist. She has said she went a long stretch in science without making money, which pushed her toward business school and an M.B.A.
That degree led to a first job as a financial analyst at Allied Chemical, and from there to the finance department at AT&T. Her move into communications was still years away.
From Finance to Investor Relations
At AT&T, Frank joined the group that split up the Bell system. Once the Baby Bells were in place by 1984, her bosses had to decide where she fit next, and Frank tells their answer as a joke. They told her, “you have a big mouth, why don’t you go into investor relations at the new AT&T?”
She took the job and loved it. Then AT&T relocated to suburban New Jersey in 1987, and Frank decided not to follow.
“I was a small town girl who loved being in New York City,” she said.
Learning the Agency Side
Around then she recognized that the work she did in-house, other firms were selling to clients for a fee. An introduction to Jonathan Rinehart brought her to Adams & Rinehart, where Joele Frank learned financial public relations as an outside adviser. She later moved to Abernathy MacGregor.
When her Abernathy contract ended in early 2000, she took her team with her and set up on 55th Street, a short way north of the old offices at 51st and Madison. The new firm, Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, did M&A communications and nothing else at first.
“When we started the firm, we wanted to have a place where we could do good work, have a lot of fun and operate under one bottom line,” Frank said.
Growth After 2000
The M&A-only model lasted about a year. “You know what we learned in our first year? At the end of a deal, guess what happens if you’re only in M&A? You lose the client,” she said.
Joele Frank’s firm added investor relations, public relations and activism defense, and later graphic and digital work. It now counts more than 200 employees and 26 partners, many of them hired straight out of college, and works out of 22 Vanderbilt.
Frank has told the story of that path on The Deal’s podcast as well. She tends to wave off the personal arc and calls the firm’s success a team effort. Her own route included a lab bench, a telecom breakup and an agency apprenticeship before she ran a firm of her own. Joele Frank has led that firm for 26 years.
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