Carisa Cunningham

Senior Associate for Media

Carisa Cunningham Carisa Cunningham, Senior Associate for Media, is founder of the queer woman owned and led communications firm, Cunningham Commuincations. She is a long-time non-profit communications professional specializing in legal and legislative advocacy, LGBTQ rights, criminal justice reform, and public health. As director of public affairs for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) from 2004-2016, she used research-backed, story-based communications to fuel the drive to nationwide marriage equality.

Carisa has been director of public relations for AIDS Action Council (Washington, D.C.) and AIDS Action Committee (Boston). She was director of public relations for Wheelock College during 2001 and 2002. She considers her work in public relations for Gay Men's Health Crisis at the height of the American AIDS epidemic in the 1980s to have been personally, politically, and professionally transformative. Internationally, she worked for the Harvard AIDS Institute in Botswana, communicating with local media about the first HIV vaccine trial to take place in Southern Africa. In her consulting work, she expanded her social justice portfolio to include voting rights, criminal justice reform, and the environment. She has helped local and national non-profits tell their stories to pass legislation, influence public opinion, win court cases, and raise money.  Carisa has also taught non-profit public relations at Boston University, sits on the board of the New England Innocence Project, and is a proud graduate of Oberlin College.

Experience Highlights:

  • Managed in-country communications for the Botswana-Harvard HIV/AIDS Partnership when they launched the first HIV vaccine trial to take place in Southern Africa.
  • Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health —writing for new program on structural racism as a public health issue
  • Health Equity Solutions (Connecticut) — media strategy around legislative session
  • Boston Women's Fund — media strategy and execution for Black maternal health grantees
  • Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Fund — communications around immigrant-owned businesses & the pandemic
  • Conservation Law Foundation's Health Neighborhoods Study — creating educational materials around the health impacts of gentrification in 10 Boston-area neighborhoods
  • Prisoners Legal Services — media strategy and execution around legislation and litigation