Stacie Burgess, the First-Ever African American in Such a Position, Starts With Exceptional Credentials, Experience
BOSTON—Fenway Health announces today that Stacie Burgess has been hired as its Vice President of Communications. With her historic appointment, Burgess will become the first African American to join Fenway Health’s leadership team. She comes to Fenway Health with 20 years of experience in strategic communications and marketing, most recently at American University, where she was the Director of Public Affairs.
“Following a national search, Stacie emerged as the ideal candidate to join our team,” said Carl Sciortino, Fenway’s Executive Vice President of External Relations. “She is a proven communications leader with experience designing and implementing national campaigns on civil rights and health care issues. Stacie’s expertise in strategic communications, marketing, and brand management, public affairs and policy, and media relations will be core to Fenway Health’s efforts to ensure that its learnings in intersectional LGBTQIA+ care and research are shared with patients, clients, stakeholders, and policymakers.”
“I admire the extraordinary work of Fenway Health and am honored to join CEO Ellen LaPointe and her dedicated team in this vital stewardship role,” said Burgess. “This opportunity allows me to leverage my communications and marketing experience in advancing the organization’s outstanding 50-year legacy of enhancing the well-being of the LGBTQIA+ community and all people through access to the highest quality health care, education, research, and advocacy.”
Throughout her career, Burgess has employed 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. She garnered national media coverage, including several exclusive opportunities, for Lawyers’ Committee campaigns addressing barriers to housing and college admissions for individuals with criminal records. She is credited for exponentially increasing the organization’s international and national visibility for its critical racial justice and equality work and cases in the areas of voting rights, educational opportunities, housing, employment, criminal justice, community development, LGBTQIA+ equality, and more.
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 where 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, presidential initiatives, and special events.
Burgess will begin work at Fenway Health on May 17, 2021.
About Fenway Health & The Fenway Institute
Since 1971, Fenway Health has been working to make life healthier for the people in our neighborhoods, the LGBTQIA+ community, people living with HIV/AIDS and the broader population. The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health is an interdisciplinary center for research, training, education, and policy development focusing on national and international health issues.
[From a News Release]
