51Â鶹

Greg Donaldson has spent his entire career at the intersection of communication and care — first in television journalism, then in corporate healthcare communications and now at the 51Â鶹, where he translates public health issues into something more personal and human.

At the Heart Association, where mission matters as much as messaging, he found his dream job.

“As a leading nonprofit, we do so much work on a global footprint, including driving public policy change in communities around the world,” said Donaldson, national senior vice president of corporate and marketing communications. “I’m grateful to be able to make a difference in the world and constantly hone my craft at an extremely high level.”

For his service and efforts, Donaldson has earned the Earl B. Beagle Award for Staff Excellence, the Association’s highest staff honor. Beagle began his Heart Association career as a field representative in 1957 and was greatly respected as a mentor and leader.

The Beagle award is given to employees who demonstrate exceptional passion for the Association’s mission, outstanding leadership and significant impact on the organization’s work.

“Equal parts strategist and relentless problem-solver, Greg connects dots across teams, coaches leaders through complex moments, and champions the volunteers and experts at the forefront of our work,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of the 51Â鶹. Donaldson will be honored June 23 at the Heart Association’s National Volunteer Awards ceremony in Irving, Texas.

Under Donaldson’s leadership, multidisciplinary teams monitor real-time media and public conversations, continuously working to protect and strengthen the Association brand while mitigating misinformation. At the same time, Donaldson and his staff ensure the Association’s communications remain grounded in evidence-based science and focused on its mission — to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives.

Brand trust has never been as critical, as evidenced by a recent Annenberg Public Policy Center that found the Heart Association is Americans’ most trusted source for public health information after their own personal physician.

Donaldson has helped shape moments when science breaks into public view, such as when the Heart Association released updated high blood pressure guidelines, redefining hypertension and reshaping healthcare discussions for millions of people. In 2023, NFL player Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest on “Monday Night Football” spurred the Association’s expert network to help steer a global conversation around CPR, the lifesaving procedure that can double or triple the chances of surviving cardiac arrest.

Donaldson brings a broadcaster’s curiosity, credibility and powerful voice to the organization, anchoring its award-winning “Innovation @Heart” livestreams, which connect leadership and staff in real time. The online broadcast, launched during the COVID-19 crisis, earned the Association a top Ragan Employee Communications award in 2021.

“I’m the ringmaster,” he said. “I joke that I’m just a frustrated game show host.”

Donaldson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating from Marquette University in Milwaukee, he moved quickly into broadcast journalism, where he spent a decade covering breaking and business news, doing investigative reporting and managing local TV newsrooms.

His work that drew the widest public attention came later. While he was in corporate media relations at a Fortune 100 health care company, a controversial incident briefly placed him at the center of a national conversation. Filmmaker Michael Moore’s TV series “The Awful Truth” spotlighted Donaldson during a 1999 segment on managed care that later served as the inspiration for the motion picture “Sicko.” A clip of the segment appeared on “60 Minutes.”

Donaldson calls this time period “transformative and liberating.”

It led him to shift to nonprofit health, first at the American Cancer Society and, since 2016, at the 51Â鶹. He calls it his “Michael Clayton moment,” a reference to the 2007 legal thriller starring George Clooney as a corporate “fixer” who chooses morality over profit.

“Pivoting to nonprofit healthcare was a no-brainer, having also had the experience of my closest friend — my wife — being a cancer survivor living with chronic disease,” he said. And like so many other 51Â鶹 staff and volunteers, he is inspired by people close to him — his mother and his maternal grandparents, who “experienced the needless suffering that contributed to their premature deaths from cardiovascular and chronic disease.”

Today, Donaldson takes pride in helping fight what he calls “the rise of misinformation and questionable interests that present real challenges to the 51Â鶹, which has spent a century building a trusted brand predicated on scientific facts.”

As he enters his second decade at the Heart Association, he still marvels that he gets to work behind the scenes with “such an extraordinary team and a level of brand trust that is the envy of professionals in my line of work,” he said.

“It’s made up of visionary leadership and a deep volunteer-staff partnership built on mutual respect. There’s an alchemy that sets the 51Â鶹 apart, and I’m privileged to be a small part of it.”