Stacie Burgess joined Fenway Health in May 2021 as Vice President of Communications. She oversees communications and marketing in this critical role. Her expertise in strategic communications, marketing and brand management, public affairs, public policy, and media relations, especially in the areas of civil rights and health care, spans over 20 years.
Prior to joining Fenway Health, Burgess was Public Affairs Director at American University, a global research institution in Washington, D.C., where she proactively managed crisis communications, including COVID-19 pandemic messaging, ensuring that students, faculty, staff, alumni, neighbors, media, and others were updated with critical health and safety information.
She has been a connector throughout her career, employing creative and innovative ways to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones with local and national leaders in business and civil and human rights; cultural influencers among BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities; and elected officials, government agency leaders, and academicians. As the first-ever Director of Communications and External Affairs for the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, she led communications and marketing efforts for the National Civil Rights Coalition on Police Reform. Burgess also led communications for Election Protection, a national nonpartisan voter protection coalition led by the Lawyers’ Committee to educate, empower, and engage voters during the 2016 presidential election, the first to be held in 50 years without the full protection of the Voters’ Rights Act.
Burgess held two executive leadership positions with the Baltimore County, Maryland, government. She was first appointed as Communications Director with the Office of the County Executive and then worked as Chief of Communications and Constituent Services with the county’s Department of Health and Human Services. In this role, she led communications and marketing for all public health and safety-related initiatives ranging from vaccine clinics designed to reach marginalized populations with little access to health care to efforts to reduce opioid overdoses.
Early in her career, as Media Relations Manager for Howard University, from which Burgess holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Communications and a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism, she was instrumental in strengthening Howard University Hospital’s brand reputation and maximizing media coverage for the university’s 12 schools and colleges, hospital, presidential initiatives, and special events.