Remembering the Life of David Mitchell a GMMB Founding Partner

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 8, 2026 — Today, we honor our partner and friend David Mitchell – an extraordinary communicator, advocate, and founding partner of GMMB – who died on Friday, January 2, 2026. Below is a statement from GMMB’s other founding partners, Frank Greer, Jim Margolis, and Annie Burns, reflecting on the impact of David’s work at GMMB and beyond.

“David Mitchell (1950-2026) believed communications could do more than persuade, it could improve lives. He helped shape this firm around the idea that lasting progress comes from bringing research, policy, and storytelling together in service of people. We honor David’s legacy by continuing the work he devoted his life to, fighting for what matters, and leaving the world better than we found it.”

David’s impact:

David’s career in communications began in June 1978, when he joined the staff of the United Auto Workers union as assistant to the director of public relations and publications—beginning a life-long career as an advocate for working people and families.

In 1982, David took up the mantle of chief Union Spokesperson. He was a patient boss but a demanding client. Jim Margolis, partner, came to understand this when the UAW contracted his firm.

“Right away, it was clear to us that he was smart, strategic, a great communicator, and just a terrific guy,” said Jim Margolis.

We decided that the best way to handle David’s constant phone calls, marathon meetings, and obsessive budget reviews, was to bring him aboard as a partner. We quickly grasped that David had a unique ability: to look beyond immediate circumstances to other individuals and groups also affected by an issue and to bring them into the story.

“His special gift was to be able to see around corners and anticipate the next move. He made us all better,” GMMB partner Annie Burns said.

During his 30 years at GMMB, David expanded the firm’s impact by specializing in public health issues, including disease prevention, tobacco control, traffic safety, childhood injury prevention and nutrition.

• In 1987, on behalf of Johnson & Johnson and Children’s National Medical Center, David led the development of the National SAFE KIDS Campaign. The goal was to reduce unintentional child injuries. In the decade that we led the campaign, childhood injuries and deaths in the United States declined by 27 percentage points. The impact of this campaign is evident today: as bike helmets and child safety seats remain the cultural norm in the United States.
• In 1997, when air bags were killing children at the rate of two per month, David led our work with Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign on behalf of industry, government and safety advocates. Through public education, advocacy, and mobilizing law enforcement, the campaign helped move kids to the back seat and resulted in a 95 percent reduction in fatalities from air bags in the United States. By 2006, fatalities among children 12 and under riding in the front seat declined to 62 percent. Again, today it is the cultural norm for children to ride buckled up in the back seat.
• In the late 1990s, we shifted the Air Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign’s focus from air bags to the biggest preventable cause of injury and deaths in vehicles – seat belts. GMMB worked to support the enactment of primary belt laws in states across the country. We organized more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies to participate in twice-yearly seat belt “crackdowns” that eventually took the name Click It or Ticket. During our time working on the issue from 1996 to 2007, 16 states enacted primary laws, Click It or Ticket became a household brand. Most importantly, seat belt usage increased from 65 percent to over 90 percent, saving thousands of lives and countless injuries across American roadways.
• For several decades, David helped shape advocacy communications and advertising to support the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids in their efforts to fight Big Tobacco to protect kids. His efforts, alongside his client, helped to increase tobacco taxes across the country in record numbers and to pass smokefree air laws, ultimately protecting millions of Americans.

No matter the issue, David always brought the same approach: conducting rigorous analysis of data, employing proven solutions, creating broad coalitions, and raising public awareness to create lasting change.

“David fundamentally shaped who GMMB became. He broadened our work beyond politics and proved that strategic communications, done with rigor and integrity, could drive positive, lasting change to improve people’s lives and build stronger communities, said Frank Greer.”

In 2016, after his own cancer diagnosis exposed him to an unjust pricing system that put lifesaving medicines out of reach for millions, David retired from GMMB to launch Patients For Affordable Drugs, a nonprofit organization. His goal was simple and audacious: hold drug companies accountable for extreme, nonnegotiable prices that ignored patients’ ability to pay. Under his leadership, Patients For Affordable Drugs became a trusted bipartisan force for reform, centering patient voices in a debate long dominated by corporate interests, and in turn helping change the trajectory of drug pricing in this country.

The effort was credited with helping shift a policy considered politically untouchable. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized Medicare to negotiate prices for a limited number of high-cost drugs, a change projected to reduce out-of-pocket costs for millions of seniors. This provision marked the first major federal legislative defeat for the pharmaceutical industry on pricing policy in decades. Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas, in remembering Mr. Mitchell said, he was “a tireless advocate for reining in Big Pharma monopoly prices.”

David’s work reshaped how patient voices are incorporated into national policy debates and helped alter the balance of power in one of Washington’s most entrenched policy arenas. The effects of his advocacy will be felt for years by Americans who rely on affordable access to prescription drugs.