The Suit Magazine

Don Gracey and his partners at CG Group conduct public affairs on a grand scale, giving their clients a voice when they need it most.

In the late 1980s Don Gracey made a career-changing decision, and he’s never looked back. Leaving a successful career in government, Gracey became a partner at CG Group, a public affairs consulting organization. The Canadian-based firm has earned a reputation for integrity, longevity, and client satisfaction.

Gracey attributes CG's success to their client-centered, result-driven business model. "We are known to be a highly ethical organization," he says. "People know they can rely on what we say, and on what we undertake to do. We don't oversell ourselves. We have a very high success ratio for the projects we've taken on. We have a solid analytical and intelligence-gathering infrastructure that allows us to help our clients be proactive and get ahead of events rather than reacting to or being surprised by them. And,” he adds, “we work really hard."

Decades of experience in high-level positions for both the Canadian and Australian governments have helped Gracey to tackle diverse and interesting projects, including working with the World Bank in Sri Lanka, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mexico. "My specialty is understanding how governments work, the lenses through which policy and funding decisions are made, and how the political level relates to the bureaucratic level," Gracey explains. "We can help our clients have a measurable impact on the government decisions that affect them."

CG Group represents clients in many industries, particularly healthcare and energy. They specialize in moving conversations forward in intelligent, research-based ways to achieve results for their clients. Their methods have proven successful in many challenging, high-stakes situations, earning CG a high customer retention and referral rate. Gracey highlighted one such accomplishment: “We received an 'Innovation Award' for our work with two municipalities in stopping a high-voltage transmission line from going through their residential communities."

Innovation is CG's calling card. Gracey lauds his partner, Nancy Coldham, for her ability to stay "three steps ahead of the herd in terms of identifying niches, where the company should be going, and what it should be doing."  Gracey also notes that their size has allowed them to remain "more nimble and innovative than large public or private organizations."

Even before beginning his impressive career, Gracey recalls being drawn to politics. After earning a B.A. with honors from the University of Western Ontario, he went on to earn a master's in public administration from Carleton University and an additional degree (with distinction) from the London School of Economics in England. "I was able to study public administration from a more international and economics-based perspective," he said.

Gracey has firm views about the value of entrepreneurship to Canada's economy, saying that small- and medium-sized businesses are creating the majority of new jobs. The best thing governments can do more to help entrepreneurs, he says, is to cut out the red tape.

"Entrepreneurs aren't necessarily hotwired to be hard-working," Gracey says. "We work hard because the risks of failure are so high. But the rewards of success are equally high."

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