Susan Watson

Susan Watson is an award-winning communication and marketing professional who creates powerful stories that deliver groundbreaking business results. Strategic, innovative, and collaborative, she leads teams to build relevancy, create purpose, and drive outcomes once considered impossible.

Watson currently serves as Vice President of Alumni Relations, Communications, and Engagement at Boston University, where she leads strategy, content, and engagement initiatives that strengthen lifelong alumni connections, deepen donor relationships, and advance institutional priorities.

Previously, Watson served as Assistant Vice President of Communications and Creative Services for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital. There, she created and launched the comprehensive Life.Giving.Breakthroughs. fundraising campaign, which raised $1.75 billion—Boston’s most successful medical center fundraiser at the time.

Before joining the Brigham, Watson was Director of New Audience Engagement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. As a key member of the leadership team for the museum’s 20th anniversary, she established an audience research and education program that reached new demographics and spearheaded a partnership with Google that restored fundraising to a pre-recession high point.

As Director of Marketing and Visibility at the American Red Cross in Washington, DC, Watson oversaw the development and execution of a strategic visibility plan for the national organization and its 700 field units. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she led the groundbreaking text fundraising campaign that raised $32 million in 30 days.

Watson has also designed pivotal projects at some of the most admired magazines, including Rolling Stone’s 25th anniversary, the launch of Men’s Journal, and CIO magazine’s seminal pre-9/11 work to increase awareness of infrastructure security.

She began her professional life as a broadcast journalist, honing her storytelling skills while reporting on unsolved murders, underrepresented communities, and undercover exposés. She has earned numerous awards and accolades throughout her career, including Telly and Webby Awards.

Watson holds a BA in Communications from Simmons College. She enjoys Pilates, still photography, cooking two-alarm chili, and riding her 17.2-hand Hanoverian champion horse, Pele.