Shannon Hunt is a Partner in The Strategy Group. She brings deep expertise in public affairs, crisis communications, coalition building, marketing/brand building, and corporate communications.

A seasoned leader with experience at the federal, state and local levels of government, she’s advised Fortune 500 CEOs and high-level U.S. officials on a range of complex, controversial issues. She spent nearly 20 years in Washington, DC serving as a partner of CLS Strategies, an international public affairs firm. During her tenure there, she led many of that firm’s highest profile clients including the Estee Lauder companies, The World Bank, the United Nations, the life insurance industry, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the American Red Cross, and the Center for Wine Origins. This included helping craft a highly-acclaimed public affairs effort on behalf of the former NFL players on concussion issues that led to one of the largest settlements in pro sports history and managed an award-winning public relations and advertising campaign on behalf of the producers of Champagne, Port and Sherry in their effort to reclaim their name in the U.S.

While at The Strategy Group, she has helped a host of clients with their corporate, public affairs, crisis and branding needs including Imagine Nashville, Ingram Content Group, Ingram Barge Company, Nashville’s Agenda, Restaurant Growth Services, O.H. Ingram Whiskey, First Horizon Bank, O’Charley’s Restaurants, and MDHA – to name a few.

Prior to joining The Strategy Group, Shannon also served as the CEO of the Nashville Public Education Foundation, guiding it from relative obscurity to a highly successful thought leader in the community and more than tripling its fundraising and investment capacity. Additionally, she worked for many years for Tennessee’s former Governor Phil Bredesen, managing his communications and external affairs. Before Bredesen became Governor, he was Mayor of Nashville and Shannon was his press secretary and chief political advisor. Prior to that, she was Congressman Bob Clement’s press secretary and chief health care liaison. Shannon is the veteran of numerous local, state and national political campaigns, as well.