Colleen Sharkey Email & Phone Number

From Mars to Hungary, I've covered a lot of ground. I have over 20 years of communications experience in space science, academia and other nonprofits. In the 2000s, I had the privilege of promoting the excellent work done at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and I stood in awe as I watched the two rovers I "met" on Earth land on our neighboring planet. In the late 2000s, I joined Occidental College (Oxy) as their first associate director of communications. A great deal of my time there was spent fielding inquiries about Oxy alumnus and then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. After Oxy, I went back to space via a trip across the Atlantic. I worked for the European Space Agency (ESA) in Munich, Germany as the lead public information officer for the Hubble Space Telescope. While there, I oversaw all aspects of communication from press releases to social media for Hubble. In 2012, I ventured farther east than I had ever been in Europe: Budapest, Hungary. I was hired to help build Central European University's first communications office and was responsible for international media relations, web content and comms support for marketing and development. I worked closely with President and Rector Emeritus John Shattuck, who previously served as an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under Madeleine Albright, and with Shattuck's successor, Michael Ignatieff, former leader of the Canadian Liberal Party. In 2017, the Hungarian government enacted discriminatory legislation that forced CEU out of the country - the first university to be expelled from a country since World War II. The majority of my last 18 months at CEU were dedicated to making sure the world heard our story through the international press. Long after CEU relocated to Vienna, the European Court of Justice decided CEU's case against Hungary, finding in the university's favor because the "lex CEU" law violated Hungary’s commitments under the WTO, and infringed the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union relating to academic freedom.In 2018, I returned to my Midwestern roots to begin a career at Notre Dame. For four years I worked closely with social scientists there to promote their research. I pitched stories/experts, media-trained faculty and students, edited and placed op-eds and wrote feature stories. In the fall of 2022, I became the media manager at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Chapin Hall is a research center focused on evidence-based solutions to improve the lives of children, youth and families.

Listed skills include Editing, Press Releases, Science Journalism, Publications, and 43 others.