Rob Spahr

Rob Spahr is a strategic communications leader and award-winning storyteller with decades of experience across the higher education, health care, and media industries. 

As the director of public relations at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, Spahr helps develop, implement, and enhance the school’s PR and media relations practices. In addition to serving as the primary media liaison, he contributes to the school’s internal and external communications, community engagement efforts, website and social media content, and various trainings for faculty, staff, and students. He also teaches the graduate-level course Strategic Media Relations for Science Communicators (PUBH 521).

Spahr previously served as the director of health sciences communication for East Carolina University. In this role, he led a team responsible for the marketing and communications for the Brody School of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Allied Health Sciences, School of Dental Medicine, ECU Health Sciences Foundations, various institutes, and ECU Health Physicians, the largest clinical practice in eastern North Carolina. In addition to routine marketing and communications work, Spahr helped guide these units through periods of significant change, including reorganizations and mergers, rebrandings, website migrations, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more than a decade, Spahr was a reporter for large daily news organizations in New Jersey. This includes serving as a supervising reporter NJ Advance Media, which provides the content for several brands, most notably The Star-Ledger and NJ.com.

Spahr holds a master’s degree in strategic communication and a graduate certificate in marketing from East Carolina University, and a bachelor’s degree in historical studies from Stockton University.