Scott serves as a senior vice president at McGuireWoods Consulting where he leads the expansion of its West Coast public affairs team. Scott is also the co-lead of the national education team and serves on the national and multistate practice team. He has nearly 20 years of experience working on policy and legislative matters at the national, federal, and state levels. Scott’s clients range from international non-profit organizations, to publicly-traded companies, to national organizations, to higher education institutions, and startups.
Beyond his federal and state government relations practice, Scott is very involved in the national scene including the National Governors Association (NGA), Democratic Governors Association (DGA), Republican Governors Association (RGA), as well as several state organizations such as the National Conference on State Legislators (NCSL) and Education Commission of the States (ECS). He currently sits on the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee’s (RLCC) Finance Committee.
Prior to joining McGuireWoods Consulting in 2016, Scott served as the executive director of Policy, Advocacy, and Government Relations for ACT, Inc.—best known for its college admissions exam, the ACT Test. There he led ACT’s Washington D.C. office, and oversaw the organization’s policy development, federal government relations, and state government relations teams. Under his leadership, the policy team generated and released—for the first time in ACT’s history—three policy platforms spanning the K through career continuum. The government relations teams secured favorable language in the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Every Student Succeeds Act, as well as engaged in more than 40 states—working with governors, state education agencies, and legislators—to grow or protect ACT’s business.
Before ACT, Scott was the head lobbyist for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), a Washington D.C.-based membership organization that advocates for and provides professional development opportunities to the nation’s state superintendents of education. While at CCSSO, he was intimately involved in every regulation or law that impacted state departments of education at that time, including the No Child Left Behind Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Hurricane Katrina, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.