Amber Dixon

I am a senior communications, marketing, employee experience, and program management professional with 12+ years of experience leading high-impact initiatives across federal government, public health, corporate communications, social marketing, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). My career has centered on a consistent strength: translating complex organizational, public health, and people-related challenges into clear strategies, communications, programs, and experiences that drive action and deliver measurable results.

My experience spans strategic communications, internal and executive communications, integrated marketing, social media, formative research, employee engagement, organizational culture, change management, campaign development, program management, and stakeholder engagement. I have managed initiatives from early research and strategy through development, implementation, measurement, and optimization, often working across complex, matrixed organizations and multidisciplinary teams.

Federal Government & Public Health Impact

A significant portion of my career has been dedicated to supporting federal public-health and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Eye Institute (NEI), and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

My work has supported major public-health priorities involving:

• Overdose and substance-use prevention
• Fentanyl and polysubstance use
• Naloxone, treatment, and recovery
• Suicide and violence prevention
• Injury prevention
• Diabetes prevention
• Workplace health
• Tobacco cessation
• Eye health
• Health equity and multicultural communications
• Emergency and disaster recovery communications
• Environmental and community revitalization

For CDC initiatives, I contributed to and led communications, research, campaign development, content strategy, stakeholder engagement, and implementation efforts designed to make complex health information understandable and actionable for diverse audiences.

I also led formative research with African American audiences to inform overdose-prevention communications, combining qualitative research, cultural understanding, audience insights, and communications strategy to improve the relevance of public health messaging.

For NCI's Smokefree/SmokefreeVET work, I served as the social media specialist, responsible for developing social media content and managing audience responses while maintaining campaign strategy, brand standards, audience sensitivities, and federal communications requirements.

My EPA work included storytelling and communications support for the Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, including website redesign, success story development, regional communications resources, and training designed to strengthen the way environmental and community development impacts were communicated nationally.

Communications, Marketing & Campaign Leadership

Throughout my career, I have operated as both a strategist and an implementer. I have developed communication strategies and translated them into the systems, campaigns, content, tools, and processes necessary to execute them.

My work has included:

• Integrated communications and marketing strategy
• Internal and employee communications
• Executive and leadership communications
• Social marketing and behavior-change communications
• Campaign development and management
• Social media strategy and content
• Audience segmentation and targeting
• Formative and qualitative research
• Websites, intranets, databases, and digital content
• Toolkits, presentations, talking points, videos, and graphics
• Media relations and earned-media outreach
• Crisis and emergency communications
• Performance measurement, reporting, KPIs, and optimization

I have also managed cross-functional teams, vendors, consultants, budgets, timelines, deliverables, and client relationships—enabling me to connect strategy, creative execution, operations, and measurement rather than approaching communications as an isolated function.

Employee Experience, Culture & DEI Leadership

My career expanded beyond external communications to encompass organizational culture, employee experience, internal communications, and DEI strategy, allowing me to apply communications and program management expertise to the employee experience.

I developed and managed programs involving employee engagement, DEI education, recognition, employee communities, leadership communications, organizational change, employee listening, and culture-building.

Among my most significant contributions, I:

• Created an inaugural divisional diversity and inclusion annual goal spanning five lines of business, achieving approximately 80% completion.
• Helped evolve organizational language and strategy from D&I to DEI, emphasizing equity and the importance of retention alongside recruitment.
• Expanded DEI recognition efforts by approximately 400%.
• Developed company and divisional campaigns supporting Black History Month, Pride Month, and recognition of women of color in STEM.
• Designed and facilitated DEI roundtables and employee-listening initiatives to identify workplace experiences, barriers, and opportunities.
• Developed governance and communications structures for employee communities/ERGs and equity-focused communities of practice.
• Created resources, guides, training materials, intranet content, communications, tracking mechanisms, and measurement systems to turn organizational commitments into actionable programs.

This work strengthened my ability to operate at the intersection of communications, culture, employee engagement, organizational strategy, and change management.

Research, Strategy & Program Management

A defining characteristic of my career is my ability to move comfortably between strategic thinking and detailed execution.

I have developed research plans, interview guides, screeners, communications strategies, campaign frameworks, SOPs, training materials, governance models, measurement approaches, and reporting systems. I have conducted and supported qualitative research, stakeholder interviews, audience analysis, data quality assurance, and performance reporting.

At the same time, I have managed the operational infrastructure required to deliver complex work—including project schedules, budgets, invoicing, vendor management, multidisciplinary teams, approvals, client expectations, and final quality control.

That combination enables me to answer not only "What should we do?" but also "How do we actually make it happen, measure whether it worked, and improve it?"

Leadership & Professional Impact

Across my career, I have frequently been trusted with work requiring discretion, judgment, empathy, organization, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. I have led high-visibility initiatives, advised stakeholders, mentored junior professionals, coordinated multidisciplinary teams, created new programs and processes, and transformed broad organizational objectives into structured plans.

My leadership style is grounded in service, empathy, collaboration, accountability, and evidence-based decision-making. Rather than viewing communications simply as messaging, I approach them as a strategic tool to help organizations understand people, align stakeholders, influence behavior, strengthen trust, and move from intention to action.