Susan Gage Email & Phone Number

Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area

Lead external communications, including public relations, stakeholder communications, social media and brand journalism for Cambia and its regional health plans in Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Provide strategic counsel on communications, including executive thought leadership, for our brands to tell the story of our work to transform health care for people and their families.

Portland, Oregon

Lead public relations and stakeholder communications at Cambia, including the Regence Health Insurance Companies in Oregon, Washington, Utah and Idaho. This includes providing strategic counsel and driving brand journalism strategy. I help oversee Cambia's public affairs communications and reputational issues management.Help coordinate Cambia Health Solutions' Voices for Affordable Health campaign, a consumer-focused community of people who care about health care affordability. Our efforts, in collaboration with Gallatin Public Affairs, earned an Honorable Mention in PR News' 2018 Social Media Awards in the Facebook Community Engagement category. https://www.prnewsonline.com/go/2018-social-media-awards/

Portland, Oregon Area

Responsible for ensuring that external communications consider all potential affected parties and that messaging is aligned across those groups. Work to evaluate and mitigate brand reputation risk. In 2015 helped develop processes and training for social media brand reputational issues to ensure those are handled quickly and efficiently.In 2016 I helped lead a companywide effort around consumer communications, ensuring that what we send to our members is clear, relevant and shows consumer empathy.

Portland, Or

Part of the newsroom leadership team tasked with continuing to grow our digital skill set and content as we transition from a primarily print publication to a digital-first company serving new audiences across platforms. This includes working with reporters and editors on digital best practices, and leading cultural change in the newsroom. Specifically oversee multiple teams that provide news and information for OregonLive.com, the website of The Oregonian. These include reporters and editors who cover breaking news as well as our visuals teams and Metro columnist Steve Duin. Additionally oversee the community news operation, which includes coverage of Portland government and schools, plus our suburban coverage, including newspapers the Hillsboro Argus, Beaverton Leader and Forest Grove Leader.Growing digital coverage of entertainment, from Food and Dining, to Music and Movies also is part of my responsibility.I continue to oversee the newsroom's intern program, both the summer session and our one-year residency program, reviewing and vetting applications, interviewing candidates and making placements in all departments of the newsroom, with an eye toward community news.Additionally, I have served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, judging both Breaking News and Features.

I'm a member of the senior leadership team of The Oregonian newsroom in charge of helping to create a strategic vision for the operation. Specifically, I oversee online operations for the newsroom, working with our affiliated web site, OregonLive.com and its parent, Advance Digital. In this position I work not only to push digital-first thinking in newsroom practice but also think strategically about ways the operation should grow digitally. Specifically I have helped to guide the following:*Pushed to transition the newsroom from a print-centric operation to one that is digital-first in online publishing and nimble at breaking news online.*Established weekly "Web Wednesday" training sessions for newsroom staff to cover everything from basic posting in our content management system to social media platforms to proper SEO practices.*Helped to grow our digital team in the newsroom, establishing an organization for digital publishing and coordination of news on our website.*Oversaw the addition of a social media coordinator in the newsroom to grow that part of our knowledge, and helped to draft social media guidelines newsroom staffers can follow in that practice.In addition to my digital role, I oversee reporters and editors for our community/hyper-local content in Portland and surrounding communities, including production of our two local newspapers, the Hillsboro Argus and the Forest Grove Leader. Oversight of the breaking news team and the sports department also are part of my portfolio, and I edit metro columnist Steve Duin and enterprise reporter Anna Griffin. My job also includes coordination of our intern program, reviewing applications and hiring interns in the newsroom both for summer sessions and our ongoing yearlong resident intern program in community news reporting.

How We Live is the features section of The Oregonian newspaper. The team includes 12 reporters who cover topics from families to free time to personal technology to religion. Four health reporters also make up a subset of the group, and they produce an expanded section dedicated to health news once a week.Additionally serve as a coach for writers newsroom wide who are interested in storytelling, including the nonfiction narrative form.

Taught beginning reporting, the college's online course, the college's newspaper lab class and depth reporting. Revamped the curriculum and the direction of the newspaper's lab class, which produced a weekly newspaper called Redweek. Led a depth reporting class that explored Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," which led to exclusive interviews with principals in the case who never had spoken publicly. The class produced a magazine, published articles in the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper and created a documentary about the book.

Copy desk slot, crime and justice team leader, deputy sports editor. As crime team leader, helped direct the work of eight reporters who oversaw police, fire, courts and prisons coverage, as well as breaking news. Helped lead the newspaper's coverage of the 1998 Thurston High School shootings in Springfield, Oregon. Also studied newspaper crime coverage as one facet of The Oregonian's participatoin in ASNE's newspaper credibility project; the result was a change in how The Oregonian covered crime.In 2000-2002 worked on the newspaper's coverage of mental health issues, including editing an investigative series and several other significant bodies of mental health work.

Copy editor, news editor, city editor

Bs, Journalism

Activities and Societies: Kappa Alpha ThetaStaffer for the Daily Kansan; member Kappa Alpha Theta.

Bachelor Of Science (B.S.), Journalism And Mass Communications