Echelle Lane Rutschman, APR, joined Youth Villages in 2009 as its first Director of National Communications. In that role, she manages all aspects of internal and external communications for the organization, including strategic communications planning, media relations, crisis communications, public relations, marketing communications, digital communications, creative services, publications and advertising. She volunteered at Youth Villages for years before officially joining the YV family.
Prior to joining Youth Villages, Echelle was Senior Communications Officer and System Director of Corporate Communications for Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp., one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health care systems. Before joining Baptist, she was Marketing Communications Manager for ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, managing national marketing communications and public relations efforts for the nation’s third-largest charity. Her work prior to that was at Walker & Associates, a Memphis advertising agency. Echelle’s career began as the editor of the university newspaper in college and as a newswriter for the university’s Public Relations department.
She has worked as an adjunct professor at The University of Memphis and as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Echelle’s work has earned numerous national and regional awards, including Emmy awards, Silver and Bronze Anvil awards, Telly awards and Addy awards. She has received the Mid-South’s highest honor for public relations work from the Memphis Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America five times since 1999, and was named the organization’s Public Relations Professional of the Year in 1996. The Memphis Business Journal named her one of the “Top 40 Under 40” young leaders in Memphis in 2001, and Memphis Woman magazine named her one of “50 Women Who Make a Difference” in 2002.
Echelle has served on the boards of both the PRSA Memphis Chapter and the Memphis Advertising Federation, and she frequently speaks and leads training workshops for various nonprofits.
Echelle’s bachelor’s degree is in public relations and political science from Oklahoma Baptist University, and she earned her master’s degree in communication in 1994 from the University of Missouri at Columbia.