Sara has a strong background in writing, project management, media relations and strategy development. At Burness, she focuses on housing, community development, how investment reaches communities and initiatives related to the social determinants of health, working with clients including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Dogwood Health Trust, DC Green Bank and Purpose Built Communities. Previous clients include the Center for Community Investment, Northern Virginia Health Foundation, CityHealth, the Brookings Institution, Low Income Investment Fund, Housing Partnership Network, and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health.
She joined Burness after spending six years as a senior communications officer at the Kaiser Family Foundation, where she worked with reporters, planned media briefings, conducted media trainings and wrote materials for activities related to the Foundation’s work on Medicare, Medicaid, the uninsured, health care marketplace trends and public opinion research. With a degree in journalism, she was the founding editor-in-chief of American Health Line, a daily news digest covering health care politics, policy and business that was the predecessor of the KHN Morning Briefing. Sara began her career at Hill & Knowlton, where she conducted media relations activities in the health care practice group. A native of Syracuse, New York, she has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Richmond.