Shawn Lindsey

As senior director of media relations and social media, Shawn Lindsey is responsible for elevating and protecting the University of Houston’s reputation and brand on social media and through traditional media channels. She leads two high-performing teams: the media relations team, which covers the university similar to a newsroom beat system, and the social media team, tasked with creating content, social listening, reputation management and leading engagement to the University’s 1.3 million followers. Lindsey is also a member of the crisis and emergency communications teams and has been instrumental in developing a crisis playbook and investing in new tools to strengthen UH’s social listening and crisis warning capabilities. Lindsey joined UH, Texas’ third-largest university, in 2009 after spending more than a decade as a news anchor and reporter at stations in Texas, St. Louis and Los Angeles. She assumed responsibility of the social media team in August 2017 and had to jump into the eye of the storm— quite literally— as social media played a pivotal role in the university’s crisis response to Hurricane Harvey that same month.