Jennie Day-Burget
Senior Communications Officer
Jennie Day-Burget, an award-winning public relations and communications professional, joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in 2015. She provides communications support to RWJF initiatives aimed at creating the conditions for communities across the nation to thrive, and to ensuring that our policies, systems and environments help children and their families access the resources needed to maintain a healthy weight. “I see the Foundation’s mission as vital to solving some of the nation’s most intractable health problems which are so often exacerbated by structural racism,” she says, “and I am pleased to employ my strategic communications expertise in helping individuals, children and families live full and healthy lives.”
Previously, Jennie was vice president and managing director at Prichard in Portland, Ore., a boutique communications agency where she led the firm’s work with RWJF and many of its grantees. She also led communications efforts for nonprofit and foundation clients across the country, including the Northwest Health Foundation, the Meyer Memorial Trust, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, and the Communications Network.
Prior to that, Jennie served as a public information officer for the City of Portland. In this role she led media relations and public outreach initiatives, and a nationally-recognized effort to teach city employees how to create and launch effective social media campaigns. She also edited the city’s award-winning Water Blog, and created and managed a host of social media initiatives.
Jennie earned a BA in English and a BS in Journalism, Strategic Communications from the University of Kansas. In 2014, PR News named her to its list of “Top Women in PR.”
Jennie has authored numerous thought leadership pieces for communicators, such as: “Quantity vs. Quality Measures: Which Matters Most in Communications?; “How to Write a Social Media Policy in Under an Hour”; “To Facebook or Not to Facebook”; and “Back to Basics: The Dinner Salon Makes a Resurgence in Social Change Communications Circles.”
Jennie is based in Kansas City where she lives with her husband and two children, one fluffy and aggressively loving, geriatric cat named Timber, and two young (and wild!) rescue dogs, Sugar and William. She is an avid reader, clocking about 75 books in a given year, and counts hiking among her other favorite hobbies.
