About Us

Harry Petchesky is also a 1962 graduate of Columbia Law School and maintains an active law practice. During his 58 years as a lawyer, he has represented many prestigious clients and has dealt with many prominent adversaries and their clients— including Donald Trump. That encounter, as well as Trump’s many decades of well-documented business failures, his conduct during the 2016 campaign and his actions as President prompted Petchesky—in response to a Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Op-ed column suggesting a campaign bumper sticker—to create the Vote for Joe Not Pinocchio slogan.

To do so, he partnered with Alan Siegel, a well-known leader in the fields of corporate branding and simplicity, being a leader in the ‘plain English’ movement in business and government and the author of several books including a series of New York Times bestselling Wall Street Journal Guides and Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity.

When Harry came to Alan with the idea of creating bumper stickers, t-shirts, and other materials characterizing the president as “Pinocchio,” Alan agreed to lend his talents to the design of the Vote for Joe not Pinocchio materials.