Erin B. Hart

Erin believes that communication is a powerful driver for social change. She’s worked with foundations, nonprofits, government agencies and more to help them engage their audiences and develop programs that make a difference for people’s health, the environment and social justice. At Spitfire Erin directs the firm’s learning work and collaborates with clients including The California Wellness Foundation, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and Hope and Heal, a pooled fund focused on gun violence prevention.

Before coming to Spitfire, Erin served as Fenton’s chief client officer and the built the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s first strategic communications department. During her time at the Foundation, she refreshed the organization’s identity and built an online presence to help people better communicate the Foundation’s focus and forge partnerships in science, patient care and the environment. She also worked with grantees to showcase the importance of scientific research and support work including the Earthquake Early-Warning System.

Erin has developed public education campaigns on a variety of issues. She created a California campaign on the need to grow and diversify the state’s healthcare workforce, and it included outreach to decision makers and Health Jobs Start Here for youth and young adults. At her own firm and GolinHarris, Erin worked with the American Legacy Foundation – and its popular truth® campaign – and state and local health departments to develop tobacco-control brands and campaigns that would prevent youth from starting to smoke. She also developed communications and marketing plans for smoking cessation campaigns across the country.

Her work in government includes serving as the state of Florida’s environmental education director and developing environmental citizenship campaigns. At the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, she developed unique public-private training programs and media partnerships that made science more accessible to the public. Her work at the Florida Marine Research Institute and Florida Museum of Natural History connected the state’s future to its natural environment and shared information through media relations and special events. Erin’s experience with environmental and health issues includes work in crisis communications.

Erin has a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Florida, which recognized her as a 2016 Alumna of Distinction. She happily collaborates with the first-ever chair in public interest communications to grow and diversify the field through efforts such as frank and to support research that makes communicators more effective at working toward the greater good. She and Kristen Grimm currently co-teach a course in strategies for policy impact at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, and Erin leads the University of Oregon’s first social impact communication course.