For over 35 years, with offices in Washington DC and San Francisco, CA, and now Chicago, Steve Grand has provided strategic advice, research and planning coupled with creative, persuasive, winning media and messaging for political, corporate and organization clients. He designs, writes, produces and directs messaging, advertising and long format content for political and corporate campaigns in all video distribution media.

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Grand specializes in Presidential, Gubernatorial and United States Senate and House elections. Over the course of his career, Steve has worked on six US Presidential campaigns, over two dozen gubernatorial campaigns and has worked to elect 15 of the current sitting United States Senators in the 118th Congress.   He has also done the winning media for 30 ballot measures across the country.   And has been involved in 15 international elections including campaigns in Croatia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands.

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In the 2022 elections, Steve did extensive media in four major US Senate races:   Ohio, North Dakota, Nevada and Georgia.  With over $150 million behind his ads, the advertising helped win two and keep the other two (both of which were deemed “unwinnable”) close.  ​

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In the 2020 elections, the Grand Team produced extensive advertising for three of the biggest, most competitive and most high-profile US Senate races in the country:  Maine, Iowa and Kansas. One Nation & Senate Leadership Fund placed millions of dollars behind Grand’s ads, chalking up wins in all three races.

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In addition to his extensive, winning political campaign work, Grand has advised on policy and produced media for corporate and organization clients as well elected and appointed officials in new technologies, education, telecommunications, broadcasting, computers, intellectual property, health care, the environment, transportation, energy, tourism, the economy, election law, and public perception of government as well as conducting message development and deployment.

He has done research, media production and strategic planning in 48 states and 36 countries, winning 8 Telly awards and 16 Pollie awards for excellence in media production – including the Telly Award for best corporate branding campaign of the year and the Gold Pollie for Best IE Presidential campaign ad in the country.

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Grand has done training for USAID, the State Department, corporations and political organizations and professionals from three dozen countries. He recently produced documentary films that chronicled civil society programs in Morocco, USAID water projects in Jordan and HIV/AIDS prevention in Thailand.

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A Rotary Scholar in England, Grand also holds a BA (magna cum laude) from Harvard University, a Masters in Communications Management, a Masters in Research Methodology and a Ph.D. in Communications from the Annenberg School for Communications at University of Southern California. He also has a certificate in survey research from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a certificate from the University of Bristol, England in film and television production. His doctoral dissertation at USC examined the persuasive effects of visual metaphor in tele-visual media.

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Dr. Grand has taught at the college level and lectured at numerous universities and campaign schools in the US, Canada and Europe, including Northwestern, USC, UC Berkeley, NC State, University of Missouri, University of Utah, University of Georgia, University of Bristol and Harvard.  Grand was named a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government where he taught a class: “An Insider’s Guide to Political Campaigns...What You Don’t Hear About on CNN.” Grand is currently on the faculty at Northwestern University and will be teaching a class in spring ‘23 called “Persuasive Video Storytelling.”

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Steve Grand has produced over 2,500 ads and dozens of long format documentary films. His unique combination of abilities in political strategy and planning, media production, survey research, corporate branding, organizational communications, polling and statistical analysis, public policy and his own research in the cognitive processing of metaphor, imagery and symbols in persuasive communication make him a valuable asset to any elected official, campaign, company or organization.