Permanence, not positioning.
The name Adelaide reflects the qualities that define our work: experience, judgment, and staying power.
The firm was built on a simple observation: when the stakes are highest, organizations do not need more information — they need trusted advice from people who understand how decisions are actually made.
For more than twenty-five years, we have helped clients navigate government, public policy, regulation, and public affairs during moments that matter. We bring the perspective that comes from having worked across political cycles, policy debates, and complex stakeholder environments.
Adelaide represents a commitment to thoughtful counsel, practical strategy, and results. Not just knowing the system, but knowing how to navigate it.
Adelaide exists to give senior leaders the advantage when it matters most. We provide the kind of counsel that only comes from having worked inside government, managed high-stakes public processes, and navigated complex policy environments from every angle — as advisors, as advocates, and as decision-makers ourselves.
We are not a traditional government relations firm. We are a principal-led advisory practice — deliberately small, deliberately senior. We take on a limited number of mandates each year because every client deserves the judgment of someone who has seen this before, not a briefing note from someone who hasn’t.
Our clients come to us when the path forward is unclear, the political risk is real, and the outcome matters. They stay because the advice is honest, the relationships are genuine, and the results speak for themselves.
We don’t work for our clients. We work with them — hand in glove — through the most complex policy landscapes in the country.
Adelaide’s counsel comes from people who have worked at the highest levels of government, led major public affairs programs, and built careers on the quality of their relationships, the soundness of their advice, and the results they have delivered.
Christopher Holz is one of Canada’s most experienced public affairs professionals, with a career spanning more than twenty-five years at the intersection of government, politics, and public policy.
Providing strategic counsel at all three orders of government — federal, provincial, and municipal — Chris brings to Adelaide a network built over decades, with the knowledge that only comes from having worked on both sides of the table.
Chris served as a Senior Advisor to several Ontario Cabinet Ministers, including the Minister of Energy, the Chair of Cabinet, and the Minister of Finance. In this role he was at the centre of the province’s energy policy and strategic communications — including decisions around nuclear refurbishment, renewable energy expansion, and the province’s emissions reduction strategy.
Over his career, Chris has advised CEOs, Mayors, and non-profit leaders across a wide range of policy areas including energy and the environment, real estate and infrastructure development, financial services, municipal government, gaming, taxation, film and television, charities and non-profits, economic development, and health care. He has been ranked as one of the top ten lobbyists at Queen’s Park by Queen’s Park Briefing, a Toronto Star publication.
Among the mandates Chris is most proud of: leading a pro bono campaign on behalf of Canada’s surviving thalidomide victims — a national effort that generated sustained media coverage, achieved a unanimous vote in the House of Commons (a rare achievement), and produced a $250 million federal funding package providing tax-free, indexed support to survivors for the rest of their lives. Read about the Right the Wrong campaign
Chris completed his Master of Arts at the University of Toronto (with research work at the University of Bath and Katholische Universität Brabant in the Netherlands), is an alumnus of the Ontario Legislature Internship Program, and is a recognized speaker and author on government relations practice, with contributions to sector publications and conference programs across Canada.
Kevin Powers is one of Canada’s leading practitioners in project advocacy — the specialized discipline of building public and political support for major developments facing community opposition.
Over a career of more than twenty-five years, Kevin has worked on some of Canada’s most complex and contentious siting challenges, including nuclear plants, gas-fired generation, hydro dams, wind and solar farms, transmission lines, quarries, pipelines, bridges, and large-scale commercial and residential developments. His approach is citizen-driven: identifying and organizing the silent majority who support a project but don’t show up at public hearings, and turning them into an effective political force.
Kevin previously served as Director of Public Affairs at Ontario Power Generation, where he was responsible for securing community and government approval for $16 billion in capital projects — one of the largest infrastructure approval programs in Canadian history. Before that, he led communications at the Ontario Ministries of Energy and Infrastructure.
Kevin began his career as a reporter with the Associated Press in Washington, D.C., a background that informs how he reads political and media environments and crafts public narratives. He holds a Master of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University.
Jodi Shanoff is a senior public affairs professional with more than twenty-five years of experience leading public opinion research and public engagement strategies across Canada, for both corporate and public sector clients.
Jodi’s practice is built on a conviction that good decisions require good evidence — and that good evidence requires both rigour in how it is gathered and skill in how it is interpreted. She works with organizations to design and implement robust research programs, facilitate meaningful engagement with key audiences, and produce the kind of clear, actionable insights that support confident organizational decision-making.
Her work spans public opinion research, stakeholder and citizen engagement, message development and testing, communications strategy, and facilitation. She has worked with government, private sector, and not-for-profit clients across a wide range of policy and program areas — bringing the same analytical discipline and senior judgment to each.
Jodi is particularly skilled at moving organizations from data collection to decision — designing processes that don’t just measure opinion but build the understanding and consensus needed to act on it. Her experience inside government gives her a distinctive perspective on how research findings land with decision-makers, and how to frame insights in ways that drive action rather than simply inform it.
At Adelaide, Jodi leads the firm’s public opinion research and public engagement practice, working alongside the government relations and advocacy teams to ensure that every mandate is grounded in evidence and informed by a deep understanding of the audiences that matter.
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