News and Insights
FINN Partners opens Minneapolis office, deepening its investment in the Midwest region
September 10, 2026
Twin Cities location joins Chicago, Columbus, Detroit and Madison, Wis., in one of the firm’s fastest-growing regions with a team of senior leaders spanning health, consumer, lifestyle and sports, corporate reputation and crisis communications, with integrated digital, social, influencer, and AI-powered Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) capabilities to drive client growth.
FINN Partners, a global independent marketing and communications firm, has opened an office in Minneapolis, its fifth location in the Midwest and its 39th worldwide. The Twin Cities office joins Chicago, Columbus, Detroit and Madison, Wis., in a region that has become one of the firm’s fastest growing.
Minneapolis represents an organic launch for FINN Partners that will have a 10-person team supporting clients from the North Loop and outside the metro area, including Hormel Foods, Medtronic, and Life Time.
A senior team with deep Minnesota roots
The Minneapolis office features four senior partners who work with teams in Minneapolis and across the agency:
- Greg Swan, Senior Partner and U.S. Head of Futures & Client Transformation, a role spanning creative strategy, digital and integration, client transformation and how earned media performs in an AI-driven search environment.
- Laura Anderson Sanchez, Senior Partner, Consumer Lifestyle and Sports, who focuses on brand partnerships, executive positioning and influencer marketing for consumer and lifestyle brands.
- Carrie Young, Senior Partner, Health, is an award-winning health communications leader with over two decades of experience in marketing research, reputation management, and strategic communications.
- David Krejci, Senior Partner, Narrative Intelligence, who leads digital narrative strategy, risk intelligence, crisis management, media forensics and campaign readiness.
Together, the team’s remit reflects strong sectors of Minnesota’s economy: health and life sciences, outdoor and sports, consumer and lifestyle brands, food and agriculture, technology and B2B, financial services and manufacturing. Minnesota holds one of the highest concentrations of Fortune 500 headquarters in the country, alongside a creative and marketing talent base that has supplied national brands for decades.
Earned-first, integrated by design
Historically, brands come to FINN for its strength in public relations, and earned-first media remains core to the agency’s. However, more and more, clients are tapping FINN Partners and its Minneapolis team as a social, influencer and digital marketing partner, delivering content, SEO, paid media and brand strategy from a single integrated team. That includes FINN’s Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) practice, which helps brand discovery in the AI search and answer engines that audiences now use alongside traditional and trade media, social feeds and search.
“Brands here are asking harder questions about how they get discovered and trusted, and the answers no longer live in any single channel,” said Greg Swan, Senior Partner and U.S. Head of Futures & Client Transformation at FINN Partners. “Earned-first public relations, social and influencer, digital and content, and the newer discovery work all work better when designed as one system from the start rather than bolted together. That is how this team is built, and it is what clients are asking us for.”
Extending a growing Midwest region
The office is overseen by Dan Pooley, Founding Managing Partner, Midwest, who has led the region’s expansion since FINN Partners launched in 2011.
“The Twin Cities has been a natural next market for us,” said Pooley. “We built Chicago, Detroit and Madison around senior talent who understand their markets and the industries that drive them, and Minneapolis is very much the same. This is a market with real depth in health, outdoor and sports, consumer brands and technology, and a client base that expects senior people in the room. Opening here is an investment in the region and in the clients we serve across it.”
The Minneapolis team works alongside colleagues across FINN’s 39 offices, giving Twin Cities clients access to the firm’s global bench and giving clients elsewhere in the network access to the specialists based in Minnesota.