ACA Connects Shake-Up
It’s been a little over a year since Grant Spellmeyer took on the role of ACA Connects CEO, and the organization looks fairly different, at least when it comes to staff. Several long-time association employees are no longer at ACAC, with VP, Communications Ted Hearn the most recent exit.
Hearn’s handle on X, formerly Twitter, switched from @TedatACA to @TedatPolicyBand on Thursday. Members and reporters used to seeing his email around 5:30am ET every weekday morning with the ACA Connects Media Sweep, a round-up of news stories of interest, may have noticed the missive is now being sent from a generic ACA Connects email. And Hearn’s missing from the ACAC staff page. He’s not alone. Caroline Persinger, the association’s grassroots manager, is also gone, as is ACAC Senior Director of Administration & Finance Karen Yochum, who started at the 30-year-old organization in its earliest days alongside former CEO Matt Polka. VP, Regulatory Affairs Mike Jacobs departed in July and joined Lumen as Assistant General Counsel, Federal Regulatory Affairs. Government Affairs SVP. Ross Lieberman left the organization last summer and then joined member company Hotwire Communications as SVP, Government Affairs. ACA Connects said it doesn’t comment on employee departures.
As for Hearn, he still has that reporter mindset, sending out multiple news stories on his @TedatPolicyBand handle and updating his LinkedIn to say publisher of Policy Band. Hearn, who declined to comment for this story, started with ACA Connects in March of 2009 after serving as Washington News Editor for Multichannel News from 1994 to 2009.
Another longtime DC association communications exec who also spent time as a trade reporter and often battled against Hearn and ACAC’s positions on retransmission consent and broadcast matters is Dennis Wharton. Wharton retired as NAB’s EVP of Communications in 2020, but he still keeps an eye on what’s going on in the industry. Alerted of Hearn’s departure, he said: “Ted’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the media biz and a Rolodex of reporters who call on him for insight on policy and regulation that’s a mile long. ACA will be hard-pressed to fill Ted’s shoes with anyone that comes close to matching his skills.” We suspect he won’t be out of the ballgame long (Hearn can be reached at [email protected]).
As for who is at ACA Connects still, John Higginbotham, who was promoted by Polka to COO in 2021 after serving for one year as EVP, Membership & Finance, is still in his role, as are Tomeika Slappy (Assistant to the President & CEO), Nathan Penrod (Digital Media Specialist), Stacey Leech (Senior Director of Meetings & Industry Affairs) and Brian Hurley, who was promoted to Chief Regulatory Counsel following Lieberman’s departure. In June, Bill Tortoriello was tapped as Director, Regulatory Affairs. He previously worked with Spellmeyer at USCellular, where he was Director, Regulatory Policy. Spellmeyer was VP, Government Affairs at USCellular before joining ACAC, becoming the association’s second-ever CEO following Polka, who retired last year after 25 years as its head.