Pat Cleary is Chief Growth Officer of Vensure Employer Solutions and serves on their Board of Directors.

Prior to joining Vensure in January of 2023, he served as president and CEO of the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO), the national trade association for the PEO industry. PEOs provide payroll, benefits, and human resource services to small and midsize businesses nationwide.

Cleary has had a wide-ranging career spanning more than 25 years in government, policy, public affairs, and communications. His areas of expertise include human resources, health care, economics, and trade.

A former chairman of the National Mediation Board and deputy assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, Cleary also spent 10 years at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the nation’s largest industrial trade association. At NAM, Cleary was responsible at various times for the organization’s workplace policy lobbying efforts, board of directors, small and medium-size manufacturers, association relations, sales, and public affairs divisions. Ultimately, Cleary presided over NAM’s internal and external communications, launching the blog ShopFloor.org and growing it to 1 million readers in two years.

Before taking over at NAPEO, Cleary was senior vice president of digital public affairs at Fleishman-Hillard, focusing on helping clients drive their messages through new media channels.

Cleary has lectured on negotiation and dispute resolution at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the author of The Negotiation Handbook. Cleary attended the Program for Senior Managers in Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Executive Development Program at Wharton. He is a member of the D.C. Bar and serves on the Corporate Advisory Board of SOME (So Others Might Eat).

He graduated from Fairfield University in Connecticut and Hamline University School of Law in Minnesota.