Burgess Strategic Marketing Services

Principal

Sandra J. Burgess

Sandy Burgess is a strategic planner, marketing strategist and professional communicator experienced in leadership and management, marketing communications, market research, public relations, corporate communications and journalism.

Before launching her own firm in 1986, Sandy worked for nine years on the Marketing and Public Affairs staff of William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where she managed a publications program that was nationally recognized for innovation and excellence. She served two years as editorial services supervisor for the parent corporation of St. John Hospital in Detroit. She started her career as a journalist for newspapers in Michigan and Ohio.

Sandy has won kudos from delighted clients and dozens of awards for communications planning, leadership, writing and publications management, including the Gold Quill Award of Excellence of the International Association of Business Communicators, several MacEachern awards from the Academy of Hospital Public Relations, the Touchstone Award from the American Society for Hospital Public Relations, the Headliner Award from the Detroit Chapter of Women in Communications, and the Troy Business and Education Partnership Award for leadership enhancing the quality of education in her community.

She has served on numerous boards of professional and service organizations at the local, regional and national levels. From 2005 through 2007, she chaired the Health Care Task Force of the Small Business Advisory Council of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. She has served on the faculty of judges of the International Academy of Communications Arts and Sciences for more than a dozen years. She is a past president of The Strategy Forum, a past president of Women in Communications-Detroit and a past national vice president of Women in Communications.

Active in her community, Sandy is a precinct delegate and a co-founder of the Troy Leadership Coalition, a bipartisan group of civic and business leaders.

She received her Executive MBA from Michigan State University and her BA in Political Science from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She has completed the Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives conducted by Harvard Law School, Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.