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CFSC Consortium Announces Leadership Change

The board of directors of the Communication for Social Change® Consortium announced today that Denise Gray-Felder will retire as president and CEO of the Consortium effective 1 March 2014. At that time she will become chief communication officer of the University of Michigan Health System.  In this newly created position, Denise will be responsible for all communication functions and staff for this $3.3 billion USD health delivery and medical education system.

 
Gray-Felder is the founding president of the Consortium, created in 2003, building upon the work she and her communication colleagues started at the Rockefeller Foundation in the late 1990s.

“Denise is a visionary, innovator, hugely successful advocate and courageous leader for the field of communication for development and social change,” says Nick Ishmael-Perkins, a member of the Consortium’s Executive Committee of the board of directors.  “For 11 years Denise has led this organization devoted to a field of practice that Denise has significantly helped define and advance, with immense effectiveness.”
 
“While we will miss Denise,”   Perkins adds, “she leaves a strong legacy of professionalism for the hundreds of practitioners in this field, working in government agencies, nonprofit organizations, community-based groups, foundations and other funding organizations, especially those working in developing countries. When we started this journey we could have fit all the CFSC advocates into one small conference room.  Today we cannot count them all.”   

Building on the success achieved under Gray-Felder’s leadership, the Consortium’s board of directors aims to transition its resources in the future more directly to practitioners and community organizations through a shared leadership network.

For an interim period, Ngbita Pendje-Wallace, director of communication, will oversee administrative matters.  Jim Hunt, a founding organizer and long-time senior adviser to the CFSC Consortium, will work with the board on transition planning. Additional details will be announced as they are available.

For Further Information Contact: Nick Ishmael-Perkins, +44 207 2929922