Who Is Risa Heller?

Nov 13, 2026

Updated November 12, 2026 (ET).

Risa Heller is the founder and CEO of HELLER, a New York– and Los Angeles-based crisis-communications and public-affairs firm. On November 9, 2026, Wired reported that Jensen Huang, then Nvidia’s chief executive, began working with consultants from her firm as early as October 2025, according to two sources familiar with the matter—about a year before he acknowledged an extramarital affair.

The magazine said the firm had handled Huang’s “behind-the-scenes communications” since at least that October, and that by the end of the month Nvidia’s internal communications teams had been told to include Heller on press inquiries about him, whether personal or professional. Wired also wrote that it was “not clear whether Heller’s early work with the Huang family involved Huang’s affair.” A representative for Heller referred the magazine to Nvidia; Nvidia declined to comment. Two days later, Nvidia’s board accepted Huang’s resignation as president, chief executive, and a director, effective November 11, and named longtime finance chief Colette Kress interim CEO.

Heller has spent more than a decade as the person New York’s embattled executives and public figures call when a story is about to break. A February 2023 New York Magazine profile by Shawn McCreesh called her “the crisis-communications warrior of choice for the city’s most cancellable elites.” Jeff Zucker, the former CNN president, told the magazine he first met her the day before his departure was announced, and that “she ended up sitting in my kitchen for like the better part of the next 72 hours.”

Risa Heller: Quick facts

Full name: Risa Beth Heller, according to her March 2010 New York Times wedding notice.
Age and hometown: She was 30 at her March 2010 wedding and 43 in the February 2023 New York Magazine profile. She was raised in West Bloomfield, Michigan; her father is a lawyer and her mother was a special-education teacher, the magazine said.
Known for: Founder and CEO of HELLER (previously Risa Heller Communications); former communications director for Senator Chuck Schumer and New York Governor David Paterson.
Education: University of Michigan, 2001, with a double major in psychology and Hebrew and Jewish cultural studies, according to New York Magazine. A master’s degree in communications from Johns Hopkins University, according to the Times wedding notice and her firm biography.
Early career: Internship at the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington office; work for then-Representative Jane Harman of California; communications director for Schumer until June 2007; senior vice president at Global Strategy Group; communications director for Paterson, April 2008 to April 2009.
Firm: Started a Manhattan consultancy in January 2010, the Times said. Now branded HELLER, it opened a Los Angeles office in May 2024 and lists addresses at 233 Broadway in New York—the Woolworth Building—and 750 N. San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Family: Married Ryan Toohey, a political and corporate consultant, on March 27, 2010, in Detroit. As of the 2023 profile, they lived in Brooklyn Heights and had three children.
Latest news: Wired reported in November 2026 that Nvidia’s then-CEO had worked with her firm since October 2025; Huang resigned on November 11. In January 2026, Applecart said she would join its board after a $100 million investment from Blackstone Growth.

How did Risa Heller go from Chuck Schumer’s press shop to her own firm?

Heller is a Michigan transplant who made her name in New York politics before she made it in crisis work. After graduating from Michigan in 2001, she has said she could not land a job until a former roommate, seated on a plane next to the head of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington office, mentioned her. The internship led to work for Representative Jane Harman, and then to Senator Charles E. Schumer’s shop. “I would be nobody, nothing, nowhere without Chuck,” she told New York Magazine.

The New York Observer, writing in June 2007 when she left after about two and a half years, called her Schumer’s communications director, a title also used in her 2010 Times wedding notice and on her firm biography. (The 2023 magazine profile and Wired described the same job as New York City–based press secretary.) Schumer told New York Magazine she was “much more bubbly” than the late press agent Howard Rubenstein, “but she has the same understanding of both politics and substance and is able to weave the two together in a great tapestry.” Her lesson from that office, she said: “It’s never occurred to me that I shouldn’t tell a powerful person that they’re wrong.”

In mid-June 2007 she joined Global Strategy Group as a senior vice president. In April 2008, after Eliot Spitzer resigned, Paterson named her his communications director. He announced in February 2009 that she was leaving to “pursue other opportunities”; the Times later said she served through April 2009. “There were a lot of fireworks,” she told New York Magazine of that year. She married Toohey, a Global Strategy colleague, in March 2010. That January, the Times said, she had already started a communications consultancy in Manhattan.

The next year brought her first major crisis client at the new firm: Anthony Weiner, then a congressman, in the 2011 scandal that led to his resignation. “There were people who told me that this was going to ruin my career,” she told the magazine, “but he was an old friend of mine and there was no chance I was going to leave him in the lurch.” She has said she took the work at 39 weeks pregnant, sent Weiner’s resignation letter to reporters, “then went up to the hospital and had a baby.”

Which public crises has she been associated with?

Many of her clients never become public. In April 2015, after Manhattan prosecutors declined to charge Harvey Weinstein over allegations by the Italian model Ambra Battilana, Heller, speaking as his spokeswoman, told the Los Angeles Times: “We are pleased this episode is behind us.” In 2023 she told New York Magazine the work lasted three weeks, that she met Weinstein once, and that “if I knew then what I know now, would I have worked for him? No.”

The same magazine reported that she worked for Kushner Companies when Jared Kushner was running it, before the 2016 presidential campaign was fully underway. “My politics were never those,” she said. “They were always very clearly not those, and it was certainly a challenge.” Other publicly reported names from that profile, and from a May 2023 Fortune article, include chef Mario Batali, New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin—who, the magazine said, “called her for advice”—and Zucker, who hired her as he left CNN in 2022. TheWrap later reported that she also represented former NBCUniversal chief executive Jeff Shell, and that Puck co-founder Jon Kelly confirmed she had represented him in a personal matter.

In December 2022, The New York Times identified her as a spokeswoman for Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the Stanford Law professors and parents of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. She said Bankman had worked for FTX for 11 months and Fried had had no role in the company. “Joe has spent a lot of his life trying to figure out ways to lift people up out of poverty,” she said. “Most of his time was spent identifying worthy health-related charities.” Covering the firm’s May 2024 Los Angeles expansion, Deadline and TheWrap listed current and former corporate clients including Activision Blizzard, Airbnb, DoorDash, Madison Square Garden, Match Group, Puck, the Texas Tribune, and Silverstein Properties. PR Week and The Daily Beast have reported that the firm represented Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes; TheWrap, in 2023, treated that engagement as reported rather than confirmed on the record by Heller. In May 2025, The Daily Beast, citing Breaker Media, reported that CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson hired her for advice on the rollout of their book Original Sin. Tapper confirmed the hiring and said she was helping them make the rollout “as smart as possible.”

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What does Risa Heller say about handling a crisis?

Heller told New York Magazine she thinks of the work as “adding context” to a story, and that she is “a big believer in second chances.” In the era of “cancel culture or whatever,” she said, “people get thrown out with the trash, and I just don’t agree with that.” She also spends a lot of time telling clients, “You cannot kill a story.” You can if it is untrue, perhaps, “but it’s very hard to get a story killed. It’s like a unicorn. You almost never see it.”

At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women: Next Gen conference in May 2023, she named a different mistake as the one leaders make most often: “sticking their head in the sand,” on the theory that bad press will pass. “It’s not gonna blow over,” she said. In a September 2021 Business Insider survey of crisis advisers, she argued against talking to the press before a plan is in place, and called unprepared television interviews and “justifying bad behavior” even worse. She described herself as “a firm believer in doing one’s homework.” Her outline, the article said, was to gather facts quickly, correct what’s wrong, and try to anticipate what could come next and where journalists are likely to turn. “And make sure you are ready,” she said.

Zucker boiled her rule down to one line: “She wants you to tell her everything, no matter how bad it is, and she’s not going to lie to the press.” On how she decides whom to represent, Heller said, “I believe generally people deserve to have their story told.” She listens, looks for whether there is “a story to tell,” and uses her gut. “If a story is knotty, I always want to work on it.”

Frequently asked questions about Risa Heller

Who is Risa Heller?

She is a New York crisis-communications adviser, the founder and CEO of HELLER, and a former communications director for Senator Chuck Schumer and Governor David Paterson. New York Magazine’s 2023 profile is the most complete account of how she works.

Did Jensen Huang hire Risa Heller?

Wired reported on November 9, 2026, that he began working with her firm as early as October 2025, citing two sources familiar with the matter, and that Nvidia’s communications staff were later told to include the firm on press inquiries about him. A representative for Heller referred Wired to Nvidia; Nvidia declined to comment. Neither side has confirmed the relationship on the record. Wired wrote that it was not clear whether the early work involved the affair Huang later acknowledged. He resigned as Nvidia’s CEO on November 11, 2026.

Did Risa Heller work for Chuck Schumer and David Paterson?

Yes. The Observer in 2007 and her 2010 Times wedding notice describe her as Schumer’s communications director; she left in June 2007 after about two and a half years. Paterson named her communications director in April 2008. He announced her departure in February 2009; the Times later said she served through April 2009.

Did Risa Heller represent Harvey Weinstein?

Yes, briefly. In April 2015 she was quoted as his spokeswoman after prosecutors declined to bring charges in the Ambra Battilana case. In 2023 she told New York Magazine the work lasted three weeks, that the firm then had three people, and that she would not have taken him on “if I knew then what I know now.”

When did she found her firm, and what is it called?

The Times wedding notice, published in March 2010, said she started a communications consultancy in Manhattan that January. New York Magazine also dates the founding to 2010. Coverage of the May 2024 Los Angeles opening, including Variety and TheWrap, said 2011—a discrepancy, with the contemporaneous Times account the stronger source. The firm was long known as Risa Heller Communications. Its website now uses the name HELLER, at heller.inc.

Where is she based?

The firm lists offices at 233 Broadway, Suite 2200, New York, and 750 N. San Vicente Boulevard, Los Angeles. New York Magazine interviewed her in 2023 at the Woolworth Building and described her as a Brooklyn Heights mother of three. The Los Angeles office opened in May 2024, led by former Netflix communications executive Erika Masonhall.

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