Naresh Raghubeer is a managing partner and co-founder of Sandstone Group. Naresh was ranked by the Hill Times Newspaper as one of the top 100 lobbyists in Canada in February 2021. He is passionate, driven and results oriented. He has proven that effective public affairs and government relations depends on (i) clear communications; (ii) building trust and (iii) working collaboratively with all stakeholders across government.
After four successful years at Davie Shipbuilding (Quebec) and its sister company, Federal Fleet Services (Ottawa) holding executive roles as Vice President Communications and Regulatory Affairs and then Vice President Federal Government Relations, Naresh decided to establish Sandstone Group to continue to deliver exceptional government relations support to clients across the spectrum. During his time at Davie Shipbuilding he was able to help the senior executive management team to reset the company’s public image and relationship with the Government of Canada during extremely difficult times and then supported the efforts to win contracts and significantly increase the order book.
Naresh is also an advocate for a strong national security and defence posture for Canada. This has been demonstrated during his work in the Senate of Canada where he supported senators on the National Security and Defence Committee, including its Chair between 2012-2017.
He demonstrated his excellent experience in communications by drafting numerous press releases, op-eds, preparing committee reports and played a significant role organizing the weekly four-hour committee hearings which were televised – live – and always well covered by the media.
Prior to working in the Senate, Naresh was a consultant supporting clients in the public policy and energy sector. He has also worked at the provincial government level between 1996-2003.
In April 2021, he was appointed a Director to the Board of the Conference of Defence Association Institute, Canada’s premier national security and defence association.