Jim Wilkinson (communications)

In 2011, he was portrayed in the HBO film Too Big to Fail by actor Topher Grace.

Wilkinson was portrayed in the May 23, 2011 HBO film Too Big to Fail by actor Topher Grace.

As of 2010, Wilkinson was working as Managing Partner of Brunswick Group LLP, a public relations firm.

Wilkinson left politics after the global financial crisis, and now works in public relations. He served The Brunswick Group as a Managing Partner from January 2009 to April 2012, when he joined PepsiCo as Executive Vice President of Communications.

As a senior aide to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Wilkinson was credited with an image-making strategy that elevated Rice to "rock star status". Wilkinson employed specific strategies to counter notions Rice was cold and did not care about diplomacy. While Chief of Staff in the U.S. Treasury department, Wilkinson worked under Henry Paulson. A Wilkinson September 2008 email regarding the government's approach to Lehman Brothers appeared in a 2010 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission document. Wilkinson emailed "can't stomach us bailing out lehman. Will be horrible in the press." Wilkinson declined to comment on his emails.

Wilkinson served as an officer in the United States Navy Reserves. His mentors have included former R.N.C. chairman Ed Gillespie and former G.W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes. As Karl Rove's choice, Wilkinson left the Bush Administration to work as the communications director for the 2004 Republican National Convention before returning to the White House under Rice.

Wilkinson was head of the "war room", or Coalition Information Center for the Afghanistan War. He highlighted efforts to improve living conditions for Afghan women. In public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilkinson was part of the White House Iraq Group under Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. The goal of the group was to "get the country on the page that the White House wanted everybody to believe: that Iraq, with its weapons of mass destruction, was an imminent threat to the United States".

In original editions of the book Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, Wilkinson was described as a "master propagandist". The book stated that Wilkinson concocted details regarding the Jessica Lynch story and "arranged to give the Washington Post exclusive access to classified intelligence that was the basis for the now-discredited 'She Was Fighting to the Death' story that ran on the front page of the newspaper" on April 3, 2003. When interviewed by the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Wilkinson said that he did not know the identity of the "U.S. officials" cited in the April 3 story. Wilkinson could not explain why erroneous news reports emerged about Private Lynch's capture and rescue.

In 2000, Wilkinson traveled to Florida to support Republican activists during the recount. Wilkinson joined the Bush Administration and worked as "White House deputy director of communications and spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's transition team".

In 1999, during George W. Bush's campaign for President, Wilkinson helped sell the idea that Al Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet".

Wilkinson began his career on the staff of Republican Congressman Dick Armey, serving from 1992 to 2000. He then worked as the spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

James Richard Wilkinson (born 1970) is an American political advisor who served as the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson during the George W. Bush administration. He had previously served in the White House as deputy communications director and as an aide to then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Overall, Wilkinson was a "well-traveled utility man for the Bush administration's PR team".

Wilkinson was born in 1970 and grew up in Tenaha, Texas. He initially planned to be an undertaker. Wilkinson received his BBA in finance from University of Texas at Arlington in 1993 and his Master of Science in government from Johns Hopkins University.