John Q. Pope
President and COO

John Pope brings almost 30 years of working press, corporate, and agency experience to bear on behalf of his clients, which have ranged from entrepreneurial startups to global Fortune 50 enterprises. He has a diverse portfolio of skills but primarily enjoys media relations, spokesperson training, message development, and mentoring young team members.

Alliant is Pope's second successful entrepreneurial venture. In 1994, he co-founded and was president of GTT Communications, a mid-sized PR agency and the first in Austin to focus solely on the needs of high-tech companies. GTT was courted and subsequently acquired by Edelman Public Relations Worldwide in 1998, and he joined Edelman as a senior vice president.

Prior to forming GTT, Pope was director of corporate relations at CompuAdd Computer Corp., where he managed the highs of exponential growth fueled by its direct business model and the lows of a Chapter 11 filing precipitated by an ill-fated foray into retail.

Based on his media relations skills and contacts, he was selected as the first director of communications at SEMATECH, a pre-competitive consortium of the nation's largest semiconductor manufacturers, reporting to Bob Noyce, Intel co-founder and co-inventor of the integrated circuit.

Pope spent 11 years at IBM in a variety of PR assignments, including media relations manager for the IBM Personal Computer program. In that job, he and his staff announced thousands of hardware and software products and handled about 12,000 press inquiries a year, or 66 percent of IBM's worldwide total.

Early in his career, Pope was a journalist for the Gannett Newspaper Group in Nashville, where he covered general news and politics, and in El Paso, where he served as business editor.

He earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from the University of Alabama.

His outside interests include ranching, scuba diving, travel and the Internet. Pope and his wife, Deborah, live in the Texas Hill Country with their 11-year-old daughter, Anna, three horses, four dogs, three rabbits, five llamas, and way too many cats. He is also blessed with two self-sufficient offspring—Colin and Ashley—and a couple of grandkids who make him proud every day.

	Most memorable inspiration:
	Learning that you can choose your attitude.

	Best career moment:
	Being laid off at 43 and discovering I was cut out to be entrepreneurial.

	Worst career moment:
	Learning early on that going "off the record" can be treacherous.

	When not working:
	Doing chores and relaxing with family on our small Texas Hill Country ranch, punctuated by all-too-infrequent travels to remote destinations.