Rachel Rush, Contract Management, COR 3

About

Communication professional with 20 years of experience in program management, contract lifecycle management, and strategic communications in health access, food insecurity, and behavioral health.

· Stakeholder Engagement: Over 15 years of advising executive leadership in communication strategy and evaluation, including external and internal campaigns, internal communication audits, speech writing, presentations, articles, press releases, and videos.

· Strategic Leadership: Lead multidisciplinary teams from concept to launch in creative and technical projects while aligning with mission and executive leadership priorities.

· Creative Storytelling: Extensive hands-on experience writing and editing compelling stories that support mission communications and branding for web, social, video, blogs, and more.

· Program Management: Over 20 years of managing performance of vendors, conducting change management, coordinating cross-functional teams, and tracking project progress using SharePoint, Jira, and Confluence.

· Contract Lifecycle Management: Over 20 years of managing contracts from acquisition planning to closeout, including acquisition planning, award, budget, statement of work, performance, risk management, deliverables, and evaluations.

· Cost + Contract Control: Manage multi-million-dollar programs, ensuring accurate tracking of burn down rates and BPA ceilings, timely purchases of other direct costs, and invoice approval.

Roles

Mar 2021–Present

Current role

Contract Management, COR 3

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Bureau of Health Workforce

Contracts / ContractingProgram ManagerInformation Technology (IT)

Lead a cross functional team of vendors to operate and enhance an IT system while managing internal stakeholders such as program staff, executive leadership, and the contracts office.

· Manage $125M+ in programs and contracts, delivering on time and within budget using Confluence and JIRA to track scope, schedule, and budget.

· Chaired a national competition to select a vendor for a high value asset system contract, organizing industry day with 200+ attendees, developing solicitation packages, and chairing the evaluation panel which resulted in an award to a qualified vendor on schedule.

· Led a strategic reorganization of a $125M+ IT and operations program to award contracts to multiple vendors, streamline communications by using the same collaboration tools, increase security by bringing work and communications to internal cloud, and improved quality by encouraging innovation and collaboration among the vendors.

· Direct contractor’s work to develop a public-facing, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot to improve customer experience and issue response time.

Jan 2016–Mar 2021

Former role

Health Communications Specialist

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Bureau of Primary Health Care

Writing and EditingCommunications

Managed communication strategies and digital tools for four divisions, engaging senior leadership for consistent messaging and smoother rollouts.

· Led the bureau-wide website redesign project, using SharePoint for project tracking and aligning the site with the agency’s digital strategy to improve user experience.

· Collaborated with the Chief Medical Officer and Executive Senior Advisor to develop clinical communications for health center staff to enhance grantee understanding of clinical updates and ensured compliance with grant guidelines.

· Co-led a workgroup of clinicians to design a taxonomy system for a new promising practices database, documenting standards in SharePoint, which enabled consistent categorization and improved grantees’ ability to locate best-practices.

· Managed $10M+ strategic-planning and website/database contracts, coordinating with senior leadership, applying FAR guidelines, and tracking deliverables.

Jan 2012–Jan 2016

Former role

Writer-Editor

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality

Web Analytics ManagerWriting and EditingCommunications

Led a center-wide data website redesign to migrate content to Drupal, implemented data communication campaigns for national awareness events, led an internal communication audit and communication strategy, coordinated all content, and managed $80M+ in data and web contracts.

Dec 2009–Jan 2012

Former role

Outreach Program Analyst

Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), Office of Strategic Initiatives, Partnerships and Outreach

Contracts / ContractingGrant Review Writing and EditingCommunications

Led the SNAP rebranding campaign, developed strategic outreach plans, wrote speeches and blog posts for the FNS Administrator, and led a full-scale RFA grant award program totaling $5M.

May 2007–Dec 2009

Former role

VISTA Alumni and Outreach Specialist

Corporation for National and Community Service, AmeriCorps VISTA

RecruiterSocial Media CoordinatorWriting and EditingCommunications

Created a national strategic alumni engagement plan, launched a nine-year social media “V is for” campaign, and created the first VISTA alumni enewsletter and social media content.