Peter Simek is a writer, strategist, and convener who works at the intersection of public strategy, policy, stakeholder engagement, and civic impact.
He is the founder of Simek & Co., a boutique strategic advisory firm that helps organizations and leaders navigate complex public-facing challenges — particularly when an initiative is stuck, stakeholders aren’t aligned, or an idea needs broader support to move.
His work spans energy and environmental innovation, public policy, education and economic mobility, cities and infrastructure, and other issues where business, government, civic organizations, advocates, and communities have to find ways to work together. His approach combines communications and public affairs with coalition building, stakeholder engagement, thought leadership, and high-impact convenings.
Before launching Simek & Co., Peter served as CEO of EarthX, the Texas-based environmental organization and conference platform. During his time there, he worked to build a more pragmatic and bipartisan forum for environmental action, bringing together corporate leaders, investors, policymakers, scientists, advocates, and innovators.
Among other initiatives, he developed a national nuclear energy summit focused on the policy, financing, workforce, fuel-supply, and deployment challenges facing the industry; expanded EarthX’s corporate participation by 65 percent; and helped launch new policy-focused programs through the EarthX Institute. Earlier, he helped lead global activations around the United Nations Development Programme’s “Don’t Choose Extinction” campaign and its unlikely climate spokesperson, Frankie the dinosaur.
The connective tissue through all of that work is Peter’s belief that difficult public problems rarely get solved through communications alone. Progress often requires changing the conversation, bringing the right people into the room, building trust across constituencies that don’t normally work together, and translating complicated ideas into arguments people can understand and act on.
Peter came to this work through journalism. For more than a decade, he was a writer and editor with D Magazine and a widely published investigative reporter, writing about cities, politics, history, culture, the environment, and public life. The City and Regional Magazine Association named him Best Columnist in 2017, and he was a finalist for Writer of the Year in 2021. His work has ranged from investigations and political essays to interviews with figures including Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, Tilda Swinton, Will Ferrell, and Lawrence Weiner.
He remains a writer — and occasionally still gets preoccupied by something confounding enough to write about.
Contact or follow him on social media here.
Subscribe to his Substack here.
If you want to get in touch, reach out to peter [at] simekandco [dot] com.
