Leading with purpose: Angela Roberts on building strong teams & impactful campaigns at AVMA
- Emily Diaz
- Oct 24
- 6 min read
PR News’ PR Nonprofit Innovator of 2024 Angela Roberts shares insights on leading nonprofit communications and how she curtailed last year’s Mysterious Canine Respiratory Disease Outbreak through an award-winning awareness campaign.
By Emily Diaz | November 11, 2024 | PRAD 595
Note: This is an article written for my final project in my master's class , Leadership in PR & Advertising, back in 2024.
As the chief marketing and communications officer (CMCO) for the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), Angela Roberts finds herself leading her team through different terrain each day. Sometimes, the landscape includes promoting groundbreaking research on animal welfare and health and other days, it includes strategizing the swiftest way to address national health crises.
In the fall of 2023, Roberts was faced with a particularly challenging force - the zenith of the Mysterious Canine Respiratory Outbreak (MCRO). This unexplained influx of life-threatening respiratory illnesses affecting over 200 dogs across 14 states called for nation-wide awareness to mitigate cases while equipping medical professionals with the tools to do so.
Through her team-centered leadership, member-driven strategy and extensive background in social advocacy, Roberts made such a campaign come to life, setting up over 100,000 veterinarians nation-wide with the information and skills to combat the spread of this illness.
In this Q&A, Roberts reveals the strategy behind her award-winning (PCC Silver Trumpet and PRSA Skyline Award) MCRO awareness campaign and her leadership style guiding her team to its success.
What does your background in social advocacy and non-profit work look like and how does it influence your current role at AVMA?
I started my career in nonprofit when I first came out of undergraduate school from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I graduated with an English literature degree, which I loved.
My first job was at an organization called The Maryland Mentoring Partnership, where I worked with youth in underserved areas of Baltimore. I spent a year at that non-profit and then worked for five years in communications at a big financial company, during which time I got my master’s degree in nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins.
When I finished my master’s, I worked at a publishing company in Baltimore called The Agora for two years, then took a position at Johns Hopkins in marketing and communications, which was my first experience within healthcare. After that, I found a role at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, then worked at the nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, all of which was really exciting.
I’ve been at AVMA now for seven and a half years and I love the organization. One of the themes throughout my career is working in mission-driven organizations, especially healthcare. I was always one of those folks who wanted to study something I’m passionate about and see where it took me.
All of my roles remind me how rewarding it is to be able to use the talents and education I have as a communicator to help people, or in this case, animals.
What does a typical day at your job look like?
Some people think I come to work with dogs, cats and rabbits everywhere, but it’s more so filled with meetings and reviewing material. AVMA is a member driven organization, so one of my main duties is to make sure our members are getting the products, services and resources that they need.
As the chief marketing and communications officer, I’m very fortunate to have a team of really amazing people who are experts in marketing, crisis communications, digital and social media, news and public relations. A lot of their work flows to me and I review it, making sure messages are aligned and as effective as possible.
Internal communications is one of the less recognized but most important parts of an organization because if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, then you won’t be able to send consistent messages that will make a powerful impact.
Your role called for busy days during the Mysterious Canine Respiratory Disease Outbreak. What was the strategy behind this awareness campaign?
A lot of the work AVMA does is to make sure the public is aware of issues that impact them in their lives and their animals’ lives. We work very closely with many groups within AVMA, and on this campaign, we collaborated with the public policy, animal welfare, and animal and public health teams.
These groups are full of veterinarian experts who give us the facts about this illness – our job as communicators is to update our materials multiple times a day, utilizing our skill sets to reach the public and our membership of over 106,000 veterinarians.
We used our AVMA News channel to produce news stories about the outbreak for our members. We created content for our website, which we also pushed out through our social media channels. We actively pitched to national and trade media outlets to get them to utilize us for their interviews when building their stories. For example, we secured an interview with AVMA’s then-president Dr. Rna Carlson on CNN.
Using our channels to put together content; getting it out through our member email platform, website and social media; and working with media to create a lot of awareness helped information about symptoms and preventive care measures flow quickly to the public and our members.
It was a great example of good internal collaboration and communication, two of the many ingredients that went into this recipe.
Tell us more about your leadership style and how you manage productive internal communications at AVMA.
One of the things I emphasize as a leader is trusting your team. I also think motives should be transparent.
As a leader, one motive I have is making sure my team members are happy, because happy people work harder, and organizations need people to work hard. When I joined this organization, I met with every single person on my team one on one and said, “let’s just talk.” We talked about everything from their personal lives to professional goals – whatever they wanted to share.
It is also important for me to make sure that people are equipped to be as productive and effective as they can be. If you want to have a team that is effective over a long period of time, happiness and satisfaction with what they’re doing is
critical. I give a lot of feedback to my team, but I make sure it’s positive feedback too.
I believe in making sure we’ve got a positive, cohesive team, making sure that people’s skill sets are as sharp as they can be and that, as a leader of this great team, I shine a spotlight on them and make sure they’re recognized for their work and expertise in what they’re doing.
How do you maintain work-life balance and handle stress as a leader?
Work-life balance is a challenge for every single person because no day at work is perfect. There’s no “one size fits all” way for coping with stress, but I think the thing that has helped me the most is finding joy in the things I do. If you like your job and the impact you have on your job, it helps you have the energy to do it. We all know it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning to do something we don’t want to do, but when we want to do it, we have more energy and less chances of burnout. I think that becomes our North Star.
With my personal life, I make sure the way I spend my time refills my energy. I joke a lot about spending weekends on the side of soccer fields because I never thought I’d be a soccer mom, but I love to do it. I find immense joy in that and it refills my gas tank to go back to work.
What advice do you have for people who want to pursue a career in nonprofit communications?
Even though not all nonprofits have large budgets, I wouldn’t be afraid of working at a nonprofit. The real difference between a nonprofit and other organizations is you get more focus on the mission, and that resonance is rewarding. I’m one of those people that says, “look, do the thing you’re passionate about and follow it.” I would encourage young communications professionals to just follow their passion and see where it takes them.
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