Prior to founding Mission Communications, Sharene Azimi was a vice president at Fenton, the country’s leading public-interest communications agency. Her successes there included:
- Rebranding the 160-year-old New York Academy of Medicine to reflect the institution’s evolution from a society of doctors to a research organization focused on urban health;
- Training a global cadre of experts and activists in how to communicate with the media around sensitive Islam-West issues, for One Nation and the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations;
- Earning the highest level of media coverage to date for PBS’ “Tavis Smiley” while outperforming competitive shows in ratings through a combination of media relations, advertising, and online audience engagement.
Sharene has spoken on cause-oriented communications to audiences at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York, and the national conference of the Council on Social Work Education.
Previous to Fenton, Sharene served as senior web producer for Columbia University, where she launched a completely reorganized gateway site and extended the updated brand to top-level offices including alumni relations, athletics, and community affairs. As a senior content strategist at Waters design, she created an integrated marketing kit to launch Harris Interactive, the online offshoot of The Harris Poll. Sharene began her career in the environmental movement, first as a consultant to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and then for several years as publications director for the environmental organizations INFORM and NRDC.
In addition to organizational communications, Sharene has worked as a journalist in the U.S. and Argentina and is the author of a novel, “Crows in the Nightingale’s Tree.” Her freelance writing has been published in Women’s e- News, The Buenos Aires Herald, The New York Resident, The Chicago Tribune, The Times-Picayune, and The Orange County Register. She received a B.A. from Wesleyan University and an M.S. from Columbia and is fluent in Spanish. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia.
