Anne Hartung Spenner has been appointed to the Community Engagement Taskforce in Shawnee, Kansas. The role of this taskforce is to provide strategic direction, advice, and recommendations to the City of Shawnee’s governing body on all aspects related to community engagement, including marketing and public communications, engagement opportunities, inclusivity and diversity, and employee recruitment/retention.
Anne is Vice Chancellor for Strategic Marketing and Communications at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, leading a team of marketing, media relations, creative, web and digital communicators to tell the story of Kansas City’s public research university. She also oversees KCUR 89.3, Kansas City’s National Public Radio station. In her prior life as a journalist, she worked as a reporter, editor and senior newsroom leader at newspapers in Upstate South Carolina, Charlotte, N.C., and the Kansas City metro. The common denominator across her professional life has been the opportunity to tell stories that change lives and make a difference in the communities she has lived in. That work continues in her new board appointment.
Anne earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, Mo., and an Executive MBA from the Bloch School of Management at UMKC. She is a past Salzburg Global Seminar Knight Fellow and a Harvard University Nieman Narrative Fellow.
Outside work, Anne dedicates time to a number of passions including church choir, United WE Groundbreakers, Harvesters, United Way and the UMKC Women’s Council Graduate Assistance Fund. She also is a past board member of the Urban Neighborhood Initiative.