Elizabeth Heller Allen

Experienced Marketing Executive

Elizabeth Allen is an experienced multi-industry communications and marketing/branding executive with Fortune 100 companies, growing Fortune 500 companies and not-for-profit healthcare organizations. Her special expertise is with CEOs who were game changers in their industry or who wanted to significantly transform market position and perception.

Most recently, Elizabeth was Senior Vice President for External Affairs for The MetroHealth System, Cuyahoga County’s essential (public) hospital system. In this capacity, she was responsible for all marketing, communications, government relations, and community and public engagement activities, and also lead MetroHealth’s move into concierge medicine.

Previously, she served as chief communications officer and a member of the executive committees for Dell, Staples, two defense companies, Raytheon and Loral (now part of Lockheed Martin), Huntington Bank and Premier Health Partners, the largest hospital system between Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Elizabeth has served on Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications Board of Advisors since 2000 and was its board chair from 2018-2022. She was an original inductee into its Hall of Achievement.

As chair of the Santa Fe Community Foundation’s Governance Committee, she led the complete overhaul of its governance, moving from a policy governance model in favor of a more contemporary one. Elizabeth created the Medill School’s first ever governance program in collaboration with Northwestern’s business, law, medical and engineering schools. She has recently been elected to Northwestern’s Council of 100 executive committee with responsibility for governance.

She is a frequent lecturer on crisis and corporate communications and has served as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Medill School’s Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program, George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management on the fundamentals of business and finance for PR professionals, and the University of Texas College Of Communications’ undergraduate public relations course.

Elizabeth earned her BS in Journalism from Northwestern University and an MBA from Indiana University.