Joele Frank
Managing Partner
Joele is the founder and managing partner of Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher. Founded in 2000, the firm has ranked #1 in M&A since 2013. Among her many professional accolades, Joele has been named to PRWeek’s Hall of Fame and Inside PR’s Hall of Fame as an All-Star for Investor Relations. She has appeared on PRWeek’s PR Power List of the 25 top PR industry leaders and was selected for the 2011 National Association of Corporate Directors Directorship 100.
Earlier in her career, Joele served as Vice Chairman of Abernathy MacGregor Frank, where she led the firm’s M&A and crisis communications practices, and as a Managing Director at Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart, a corporate and financial public relations firm. Before that, Joele worked closely with the investment community as part of AT&T’s treasury department, including during the breakup of the Bell System.
She began her corporate career as a senior financial analyst at Allied Chemical. Joele previously specialized in DNA replication as a research biochemist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Education
Joele received an A.B. in chemistry from Mount Holyoke College and an M.B.A. in finance from Long Island University. She is on the Board of Directors of the Paradigm for Parity® coalition, an organization dedicated to addressing the systemic gender and racial gaps in the corporate sector, as well as The Museum at FIT. She is also a member of The Committee of 200 and the Financial Women’s Association.
Recent Highlights
Select Experience
A Trusted Advisor
For more than 30 years, Joele has been a trusted advisor to her clients, counseling executive teams and Boards of Directors in managing through highly complex and delicate events. Having played a major role in more than 3,000 special situations, Joele understands the impact communications has on corporate reputation and the ability to achieve overall business objectives. While best known for her work in M&A and activism defense, Joele is proud to have built a broad-reaching firm that provides best-in-class support to clients across practice areas, including crisis, restructuring and bankruptcy, litigation, ESG, and investor and public relations.
A Seasoned Professional
Joele has advised on many of the highest profile friendly and unsolicited M&A campaigns, including: Broadcom in its pending acquisition of VMware; Kansas City Southern in its acquisition by Canadian Pacific and unsolicited offer from Canadian National; HP in its defense against Xerox and Carl Icahn; Time Warner in its defense against 21st Century Fox; Verizon in its acquisition of Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless; US Airways in its merger with American Airlines; SIRIUS in its merger with XM; PeopleSoft in its defense against Oracle; and the William R. Hewlett Trust in its opposition to the HP-Compaq merger. Joele has defended more companies against big-name activist shareholders than anyone else, challenging Carl Icahn over 30 times, Starboard over 40 times, and Pershing Square over 10 times. Some notable assignments include: DuPont, State Street, and Family Dollar against Trian; Allergan, Procter & Gamble, Herbalife, General Growth Properties, and Target against Pershing Square; Hertz, Family Dollar, Oshkosh, Clorox, and Lionsgate against Carl Icahn; and Colgate-Palmolive, Sony, Sotheby’s, and Yahoo! against Third Point. Joele has also advised Boards and management teams on matters of governance and succession, including Phil Knight, co-founder and Chairman of NIKE, on his ownership, leadership, and ultimate transition to Chairman of NIKE.
A Strong Advocate
Joele works fearlessly and tirelessly to ensure her clients’ stories are resonating with the right audiences, leveraging her deep relationships with the print, broadcast, and online business media as well as the analyst and arbitrageur communities.
In Conversation
Why are you drawn to working with clients involved in Chapter 11 proceedings?
It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but I find the assistance my colleagues and I provide to companies undergoing a financial reorganization to be extremely rewarding. In these situations, the stakes are very high and the result can be existential for the company. The quality of the advice we provide and materials we produce can have a meaningful impact on a wide range of constituencies, including employees, their families, and the communities they serve. I worked on the Chapter 11 filing of Pan American World Airways during my first week on the job in November 1990 and instantly became hooked. I’ve been involved in hundreds of cases since then, including many with successful outcomes.
Why are you drawn to working with clients involved in Chapter 11 proceedings?
It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but I find the assistance my colleagues and I provide to companies undergoing a financial reorganization to be extremely rewarding. In these situations, the stakes are very high and the result can be existential for the company. The quality of the advice we provide and materials we produce can have a meaningful impact on a wide range of constituencies, including employees, their families, and the communities they serve. I worked on the Chapter 11 filing of Pan American World Airways during my first week on the job in November 1990 and instantly became hooked. I’ve been involved in hundreds of cases since then, including many with successful outcomes.
Who are some of the notable people you’ve had a chance to work with in your career?
I’ve had the opportunity to meet many accomplished business leaders and investors over the years. But two mentors early in my career probably had the greatest impact on me. In college, I developed a friendship with the university’s president, A. Bartlett Giamatti, an engaging and witty scholar of renaissance literature who later went on to serve as Commissioner of Major League Baseball (and father of actor Paul Giamatti). I later spent two years as news clerk to A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, columnist and former Executive Editor of The New York Times. Despite winning a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and leading The Times’ fearless coverage of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, his op-ed column was a complete flop!
Why are you drawn to working with clients involved in Chapter 11 proceedings?
It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but I find the assistance my colleagues and I provide to companies undergoing a financial reorganization to be extremely rewarding. In these situations, the stakes are very high and the result can be existential for the company. The quality of the advice we provide and materials we produce can have a meaningful impact on a wide range of constituencies, including employees, their families, and the communities they serve. I worked on the Chapter 11 filing of Pan American World Airways during my first week on the job in November 1990 and instantly became hooked. I’ve been involved in hundreds of cases since then, including many with successful outcomes.
Why are you drawn to working with clients involved in Chapter 11 proceedings?
It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but I find the assistance my colleagues and I provide to companies undergoing a financial reorganization to be extremely rewarding. In these situations, the stakes are very high and the result can be existential for the company. The quality of the advice we provide and materials we produce can have a meaningful impact on a wide range of constituencies, including employees, their families, and the communities they serve. I worked on the Chapter 11 filing of Pan American World Airways during my first week on the job in November 1990 and instantly became hooked. I’ve been involved in hundreds of cases since then, including many with successful outcomes.
Who are some of the notable people you’ve had a chance to work with in your career?
I’ve had the opportunity to meet many accomplished business leaders and investors over the years. But two mentors early in my career probably had the greatest impact on me. In college, I developed a friendship with the university’s president, A. Bartlett Giamatti, an engaging and witty scholar of renaissance literature who later went on to serve as Commissioner of Major League Baseball (and father of actor Paul Giamatti). I later spent two years as news clerk to A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, columnist and former Executive Editor of The New York Times. Despite winning a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and leading The Times’ fearless coverage of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, his op-ed column was a complete flop!
Personal Side
In the News
Joele Frank, a founder and managing partner of our firm, has been inducted to the PRWeek Hall of Fame.
Joele Frank was named the 2019 Financial Agency of the Year by The Holmes Report at the North American SABRE Awards in May, marking the third time in five years that the firm has received the award, which recognizes superior achievement in the field of financial communications in North America.
The Deal recently highlighted three of Joele Frank’s shareholder activism defense mandates from the 2024 proxy season: Norfolk Southern, Match Group and Macy’s.