By EPR Editorial Team.
Related coverage: PR Agency Profiles Directory · Industry Leaders · Entertainment & Media · Crisis Communications
Leslie Sloane is one of the most consequential celebrity publicists working in entertainment. Vision PR, the firm she founded in 2014 inside James Dolan's Madison Square Garden offices, represents roughly fifty active clients across film, television, comedy, and music. The roster includes Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Chris Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laverne Cox, Michael J. Fox, Katie Holmes, Kate Beckinsale, Renée Zellweger, Megan Fox, and Katherine McPhee, among others. Sloane is the founder and CEO. The firm operates bi-coastally with senior teams in New York and Los Angeles.
The Founder
Leslie Sloane Zelnik spent seventeen years at Baker Winokur Ryder (BWR) before launching her own firm in 2014. The final five of those years she held the title of co-president. Sloane was named one of New York's 50 Most Powerful Women by the New York Post in 2007, alongside Hillary Clinton, Diane Sawyer, Heidi Klum, and Arianna Huffington. She is known inside the industry for an aversion to her own publicity, which has not stopped her from sitting at the center of nearly every major celebrity reputation event of the past two decades. Sloane once described her operating principle to The New York Times in a rare on-record moment: "My job is to protect my clients. That's it. Everything else is noise."
Her early roster at BWR included Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and other tabloid-era A-listers whose careers ran through New York rather than Los Angeles. When she left BWR, much of that roster followed her to Vision.
The Firm
Vision PR launched in October 2014 with a bi-coastal model. The New York headquarters was placed inside the Madison Square Garden offices of James Dolan, who provided both office space and financial backing at launch. The Los Angeles office opened in 2016, anchored by veteran publicists Gina Hoffman (formerly of PMK and Baker Winokur Ryder) and Hilary Hansen (formerly of BNC and PMK/BNC).
The New York senior team includes Jami Kandel and Jessica Pierson, both promoted in 2021 in recognition of their role in building the firm. Kandel and Pierson came over from BWR with Sloane at launch. The firm's broader bench has grown to roughly two dozen across the two coasts.
Vision PR has no public-facing website. That is a deliberate choice. The firm operates on referral and existing relationships and treats the absence of a website as a brand signal in its own right. In a category where most firms run elaborate digital footprints, the void is the statement.
The Roster
The Vision PR client list has shifted over the past decade as careers moved through their cycles, but the core has been consistent. Current and recent clients of record include:
- Blake Lively — the firm's most visible client through the late 2024 and 2025 cycle
- Ryan Reynolds — handled through Jami Kandel
- Chris Rock — handled through Jessica Pierson
- Sarah Michelle Gellar
- Laverne Cox
- Michael J. Fox
- Katie Holmes
- Kate Beckinsale
- Renée Zellweger
- Megan Fox
- Katherine McPhee
- Marlon Wayans, Justin Long, Arsenio Hall, Maggie Q, Brianne Howey, Rosie Perez, Katheryn Winnick, Jason Biggs
The LA office adds Milo Ventimiglia, Mackenzie Foy, Ian Harding, Constance Zimmer, Ashley Madekwe, and Jay Baruchel, among others. Past clients include Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Zoe Saldaña, Shannen Doherty, Scott Foley, and Justin Theroux.
The Weinstein Funding Question
At launch in 2014, Vision PR received financial backing from Harvey Weinstein through The Weinstein Company, in addition to Dolan's investment. The fact was reported at the time by The Hollywood Reporter and is part of the public record. Sloane had previously served as Weinstein's publicist during her years at BWR.
Weinstein was convicted in 2020 in New York and 2022 in Los Angeles on multiple sex-crime charges and is now serving a combined sentence in excess of two decades. The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Vision PR has had no operational connection to Weinstein or his interests since that period, but the launch-era funding remains part of the firm's history and resurfaces in coverage of high-profile cases involving Sloane's current clients.
The It Ends With Us Case — Full Timeline Through June 2026
Sloane sat at the center of one of the largest celebrity legal disputes of the decade. The dispute originated around the August 2024 release of It Ends With Us, in which her client Blake Lively co-starred with Justin Baldoni. Lively filed a complaint in December 2024 with the California Civil Rights Department alleging harassment and a coordinated retaliation campaign. Baldoni filed a $400 million countersuit in January 2025 naming Lively, Reynolds, and Sloane personally, alleging civil extortion and defamation. Sloane's attorney Sigrid McCawley of Boies Schiller Flexner filed to dismiss in February 2025 with a widely-quoted line: "The Wayfarer parties have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the wall to try to distract from the substance of Ms. Lively's harassment allegations."
The case resolved across three rulings. Federal Judge Lewis Liman dismissed the Wayfarer parties' $400 million countersuit on June 9, 2025, holding that the Wayfarer parties had not alleged Sloane, Reynolds, or the New York Times would have seriously doubted their statements were true. Judge Liman dismissed ten of Lively's thirteen claims against Baldoni in April 2026. Lively and Baldoni reached a private settlement in May 2026. A subsequent ruling in June 2026 required Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios to cover Lively's attorneys' fees, though the court denied Lively's claim for punitive damages.
The case reset how the entertainment press writes about publicist conduct during a film cycle. It also positioned Sloane at the visible center of the modern celebrity-publicist function — the role that used to operate quietly behind the press kit and now operates as a named character in the story itself.
Position in the Category
Vision PR sits in a tight cluster of New York and Los Angeles celebrity publicists who control access to the global A-list. The peer set includes Slate PR (founded by Stephen Huvane and Andy Gelb), ID PR (now ID-PR / Iddo Patt), Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis, 42West, Narrative PR, and the talent-side practices at WME and CAA. The differentiator inside Vision is the New York center of gravity and a roster weighted toward television and film leads who manage their public profiles tightly.
The firm has not chased corporate communications, financial PR, or political work. The discipline is celebrity representation, with the crisis and litigation overflow that comes with a high-profile entertainment roster.
The MSG Operating Environment in 2026
Vision PR works inside an operating environment that became structurally newsworthy across the first half of 2026. Madison Square Garden Sports Corp. stock rose approximately 152% across the trailing twelve months, driven by the New York Knicks' first NBA Finals run since 1999. James Dolan's board approved exploration of a potential split of the Knicks and Rangers into separate publicly traded companies in February 2026. President Donald Trump attended Game 3 at MSG during the Finals series against the San Antonio Spurs. Wired magazine published an investigation into the arena's facial-recognition surveillance system, which has been used to enforce blacklists across Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, and Sphere in Las Vegas. A public dispute between Dolan and the New York mayor over the canceled Game 4 watch party outside the arena unfolded the same week as the Finals run.
None of those stories run through Vision PR. All of them run through the building where Vision PR has its New York headquarters. The publicity address is the proximity.
