Christine Heenan is the founder of Clarendon Group, a consulting firm focused on social impact strategy, communications, advocacy campaigns, and leadership voice. Clarendon advises Harvard University, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ballmer Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Broad Institute, and other leading global organizations and philanthropists.  She and her firm are called upon for their expertise in strategy, creative storytelling, proactive and reactive communications campaigns, crisis management and policy built over decades of work with chief executives and their leadership teams at foundations, universities, companies, and in government.

Heenan served as Senior Vice President for Global Policy & Advocacy at The Rockefeller Foundation, where she led the Foundation’s policy, program influence, partnerships, and communications teams, as well as its regional teams in Asia and Africa and its Bellagio and Fellows unit.  While at Rockefeller, she led the creation of #Solvable, a global platform for highlighting the UN Sustainable Development Goals featuring more than 45 mini-films, an acclaimed podcast, and an award-winning documentary film. 

From 2008 to 2015, Heenan was Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications for Harvard University, overseeing its communications, government relations, and digital strategy teams in Cambridge, Boston and Washington, DC. During the Clinton Administration she served in the White House as a senior policy analyst and speechwriter, focused primarily on health care policy and women’s empowerment. 

Heenan was an adjunct assistant professor of public policy at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University and a Freshman Seminar instructor at Harvard College, teaching on communications in policy making. In 2010, Heenan was awarded a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center at Harvard. She is currently a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, where she lectures on crisis communications. 

Heenan began her career in business strategy consulting for Telesis and SJS – spinoffs of Boston Consulting Group -- working on business process analysis, cost analysis, market strategy, and strategic planning for national and international corporations including Corning, Rubbermaid, Ahlstrom and IKEA. She has served on a number of boards focused on child development, education, and economic policy, and now serves on the board of the David Rockefeller Fund. She and her family live in New York and Rhode Island.