Rob DeRocker, President of Rob DeRocker & Associates, is an economic development marketing consultant based in Sleepy Hollow, NY and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands with more than a quarter century’s worth of experience in the field.

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For 18 years Rob served on the staff at Development Counsellors International, a Manhattan-based marketing and public relations firm specializing in economic development and tourism.  Starting in 1990 as an account executive, Rob advanced to become the firm’s executive vice president and part owner.  He headed up the firm’s media relations activities, helping to solidify DCI’s equity among the national and international business press.  Rob also served a pivotal role in enhancing relationships with the nation’s top site selection consultants, professionals that advise companies on their expansions and relocations.

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Rob left the DCI partnership in 2008, but continued to work with the firm for several years as a senior counselor, primarily in marketing the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico for business investment, an assignment Rob had landed for DCI in 2002 and continued to serve until 2012.  

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Over the years Rob has personally served some 40 client communities—cities, regions, states and countries—stretching from Barbados to New Zealand, and including some three dozen jurisdictions within the United States (click here for a comprehensive list).  

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Rob retains a close relationship with top-tier media. In addition to placing clients in their outlets, he has been often quoted on economic development issues himself—in media that include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times and many other business publications—while also appearing on CNN, Fox Business News and National Public Radio among other broadcast outlets. 

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Earlier in his career Rob served as reporter for two community newspapers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and later as the speech writer for New York’s Deputy Mayor for Finance and Economic Development.  Rob was also founding executive director of Habitat for Humanity in New York and was responsible for recruiting former President Jimmy Carter as a volunteer carpenter on the group’s first project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  The week-long work party was the “hammer swing heard around the world” that first put Habitat in the international spotlight. 

 

​Rob was raised in Gloversville, a small town in Upstate New York, but moved to New York City in 1978, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in political science at New York University in 1980.  He and his wife, Melinda, a professional singer, live in Tarrytown, NY along with their black Labrador, Evelyn, and also have a home in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, where Rob holds a real estate license.