Our People

Rachele Hayward (Huennekens)
she/her
Senior Program Director
Until we are all free, we are none of us free. — Emma Lazarus
Mendocino, California
(703) 470-2454

EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE

Rachele has more than 15 years of experience bridging community organizing and media power as a passionate social justice communicator, political strategist, and former press secretary to Kamala Harris. Rachele leads Resource Media’s clients through imaginative multichannel communications strategies to advance their climate, health, environmental and social justice missions.

Highlights & Background

At Resource Media, Rachele is proud to have co-managed creative digital advertising campaigns for abortion access and reproductive justice with If/When/How, led public policy communications supporting the cleanest building codes in the nation in Washington state, launched Jewish climate justice group Dayenu's first get-out-the-vote campaign in 2020, and contributed to Indigenous-led environmental justice and LandBack efforts in California.

Rachele served as Press Secretary for California Attorney General Kamala Harris from 2015-2016, serving as her spokesperson and leading statewide public information efforts. Highlighted initiatives included environmental enforcement actions including involving Exxon, strengthening reproductive rights, student loan debt relief, breaking the school to prison pipeline, advancing police accountability and criminal justice reform, and a crackdown on “revenge porn.”

Earlier in her career, Rachele was a communications consultant at RALLY in San Francisco and a communications strategist for the Sierra Club as well as other nonprofit organizations and labor unions. Rachele holds a BA in Political Communications from George Washington University. Far from D.C. today, you can usually find Rachele taking walks with her two young daughters, partner, and dogs in the beautiful redwood forest and Pacific coast of rural Northern California.