Team Category: Advisory Services

Todd Eardensohn

Todd Eardensohn serves as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Managing Director of BGR Group, overseeing all aspects of the firm’s financial operations and international business development. He joined BGR in 1998 after years of financial experience in the private sector and political arena.

In his role as CFO, Todd manages budgeting and financial reporting; strategic planning; treasury and cash management; and insurance, banking and lending relationships. Additionally, he analyzes the viability of potential financial opportunities as an ongoing investment strategy of the overall firm. He also administers the BGR PAC, the firm’s political action committee that supports political candidates and committees.

Todd’s financial experience includes time at KPMG serving as an auditor in the government and non-profit sector. His political acumen comes from a variety of experiences and roles, including serving as treasurer of Lamar Alexander’s 1996 presidential campaign, where he developed and implemented the campaign’s financial plan. He has also served as deputy treasurer of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and as assistant controller for the Bush-Quayle ‘92 campaign.

Additionally, Todd served as president of Capital Compliance Group, a firm that provided financial consulting services to various state and federal political committees and campaigns, including Dole for President, Engler for Governor, and the Republican Governors Association.

A Vermont native, Todd is a certified public accountant and a licensed real estate agent. He resides in the Washington, D.C. area.

Jeffrey H. Birnbaum

Jeff Birnbaum, a principal at BGR, heads its public relations practice. He leads a team in Washington that gives strategic advice to coalitions, companies and governments about issue campaigns, earned and paid media, data-driven audience identification, and crisis communications. An award-winning journalist, Jeff has worked for several premier news outlets in the United States.

Jeff, who joined BGR in 2010, has helped run issue campaigns, design digital communications, manage coalitions, and protect and improve clients’ reputations. On behalf of a wide range of clients, he has worked with international, national and regional media.

His experience prior to joining BGR includes serving as a White House, congressional and tax reporter for the Wall Street Journal, a senior political correspondent for Time Magazine, Washington bureau chief for Fortune Magazine and a columnist for the Washington Post. He is also the author of five books about Washington including the award-winning “Showdown at Gucci Gulch,” which he wrote with Alan S. Murray, and “Fifty Years of Business Roundtable: The Voice of America’s Leading CEOs in Washington,” for which he led a writing team. In 1994, he won the Aldo Beckman Memorial Award for his coverage of the White House.

“Showdown at Gucci Gulch” won the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award in 1988. In 1992, Jeff’s second book, “The Lobbyists,” was a Washington Post bestseller. “Madhouse,” Jeff’s third book, about President Clinton’s White House, was published in 1996. His fourth book, “The Money Men,” examines campaign fundraising and was published in 2000. For his fifth book, Jeff was hired by Business Roundtable in 2022 to write the prestigious organization’s definitive history.

Jeff was chairman of the Bryce Harlow Foundation, Washington’s leading organization of government affairs professionals, and was a longtime member of the board of the National Press Foundation.

A native of Scranton, Pa., Jeff is married with three children. He graduated with honors as an English major from the University of Pennsylvania where he was a member of the class of 1978.

Lester Munson

Lester Munson serves as Head of the International Practice at BGR Group, a leading government relations firm in Washington, D.C., where he consults with foreign governments, corporations and advocacy groups. His work has focused on sovereign clients in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

Lester leads BGR’s foreign assistance practice, which provides advisory and government relations services to companies, advocacy groups and non-governmental organizations in the international aid policy area. As a former senior USAID official and veteran of multiple congressional committees, Lester provides clients with unique knowledge, skills and abilities to advance their goals.

Lester joined BGR Group in November 2015 after a 26-year career on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch. He was most recently Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Previously, Lester was Chief of Staff for Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. During his tenure, Senator Kirk became the leading Republican voice in the Senate on Iran and other national security issues.

During the Bush Administration, Lester served as Deputy Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he focused on legislative affairs as well as global health issues. He led legislative efforts to develop and implement the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and won an award for his contribution to the creation of the President’s Malaria Initiative.

He also serves as adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University and speaks regularly on the foreign policy role of Congress and on U.S. foreign assistance issues. He is a visiting fellow at the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney, Australia. He is a co-chair of the Executive Committee of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Senior Fellow at George Mason’s National Security Institute and a commentator on Bloomberg News and other media outlets.

In addition, Lester is the host of the weekly podcast “Fault Lines,” a bipartisan discussion of foreign policy issues associated with the National Security Institute.