Christine Heenan

Christine Heenan is Executive Partner and Chief Communications Officer at Flagship Pioneering, where she leads communications, government relations/regulatory affairs, digital and creative strategy, and brand and marketing for Flagship and its enterprise companies. She also serves as an advisor to the forty-plus Flagship-founded companies in its broader ecosystem.

As the founder and former president of Clarendon Group, a consulting firm focused on social impact, communications, advocacy, and leadership voice, Christine advised the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Institute, the Whitehead Institute, CARE USA, the Ballmer Group, the Rockefeller Family Office, Pivotal Ventures, and other notable organizations, leaders, and philanthropists. She previously served as Senior Vice President for Global Policy & Advocacy at The Rockefeller Foundation, where she led the Foundation’s policy, partnerships, fellowship, and communications teams, as well as its regional teams in Asia, Africa, and Bellagio, Italy.  

From 2008 to 2015, Christine 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, women’s issues, and other areas of domestic policy.

Christine has conceived and launched several storytelling initiatives across film, podcast, and digital media channels, including #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. She also helped conceive and launch the “Without Mom” campaign, a multi-country effort to raise awareness for preventable maternal mortality launched during Mom Congress on Capitol Hill in 2018. With the Broad Institute and the Boston Globe, she also helped create and launch Brave New Planet, a podcast about new technologies and their impact on society.

She was an adjunct assistant professor of public policy at the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, a Freshman Seminar instructor at Harvard College, and was awarded a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Derek Bok Center at Harvard in 2010. She was a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, and an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School in 2020.

Christine 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. She serves on the boards of the David Rockefeller Fund, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the University of Rhode Island, and Resilient Cities Catalyst.