Melissa Schwartz is the Chief Operating Officer at The Bromwich Group. As a consultant to the Joyful Heart Foundation, she has led advocacy-focused media strategy and public relations since 2012. Melissa has two decades of strategic and crisis communications experience in government, the private sector, and at nonprofit organizations.
Melissa was tapped by the Obama administration to manage crisis communications for the federal agency responsible for the regulation and oversight of offshore drilling in U.S. federal waters following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Also among her career highlights is: her work
managing Joyful Heart's multi-year Executive and Legislative Branch-focused advocacy campaign to federally fund efforts to clear the nationwide rape kit backlog; serving as a communications strategist for the national “NO MORE” PSA series on domestic violence and sexual assault; and working as a senior spokesperson at the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Interior, and for U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski.
Melissa is an Adjunct Professor who currently teaches for the University of Washington’s Communication Leadership graduate program, and has previously provided instruction at Johns Hopkins University’s Master of Arts in Communication program and the University of California, Washington Center. She has published chapters in PR News Guidebooks focused on PR Measurement, Crisis Management, Media Training, and Corporate Social Responsibility, and is a contributor to the Huffington Post. She earned her M.A. in Political Communications from Johns Hopkins University and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in American Studies and a minor in Dramatic Arts.
