• Senate and State Department alum Scott Mulhauser is hanging a shingle. His new firm, Aperture Strategies, launched late last month and will focus on strategic advisory and public affairs. He worked on Capitol Hill on the Senate Finance Committee, held a senior role on the reelection effort of former President Obama, was a top aide at the Export-Import Bank and at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
• BGR Group has made two new hires and will be opening a Texas office. Most recently, it announced it would be bringing on Justin Rzepka, the vice president of government relations at NCTA — the Internet and Television Association. He begins on July 20. The firm has also hired Jerry Strickland, who led Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) Office of State-Federal Relations, who will open and lead its new office in Austin, Texas.
• Julie Eddy Rokala has joined Cassidy & Associates. She most recently served as chief of staff to Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), working for the congresswoman for more than a decade. She also served as a senior director for government affairs at the Mortgage Bankers Association and worked in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Clinton administration.
• Bipartisan lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas snagged Helen Tolar, the former chief of staff to GOP Sen. John Boozman (Ark.) and former staff director for the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
• SoftBank, parent company of Sprint and others, has tapped Ford’s top lobbyist — Ziad Ojakli — to serve as its senior vice president and global government affairs officer. He begins the job on Aug. 1. Ojakli has been with Ford for more than a decade and previously worked in the White House during the George W. Bush administration.
• Three lobbyists have decamped from McGuireWoods Consulting for top-grossing K Street firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck: Russell Sullivan, Harold Hancock and Rosemary Becchi will be forming a national tax policy group at the firm. Sullivan spent 14 years with the Senate Finance Committee, ultimately running the Democratic staff; Hancock served as tax counsel for House Ways and Means Committee Republicans. Becchi formerly worked in the Office of the Chief Counsel at the IRS and in the Senate Finance Committee.