Burt Edwards

Burt serves as a part-time, senior advisor for ReThink Media, partnering with ReThink leadership to help partners develop effective communications strategies and campaigns to move hearts and minds, shape policy agendas, and engage key community partners. He brings almost 30 years of experience leading and designing creative public affairs campaigns at the intersection of communications, advocacy, and community engagement.

Based in the Pacific Northwest, Burt previously worked for over two decades in Washington, DC with an array of leading nonprofit, public, and private sector organizations to create communications and public education campaigns that effectively shape public opinion on pressing policy debates, from climate change to international conflict. Burt also has led numerous crisis communications efforts—ranging from coordinating community communication efforts to support the US humanitarian community’s response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola crisis to leading rapid-response efforts for a PNW-based conservation group around the 2017 Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia Gorge.

A graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, Burt holds a Master’s of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, where he founded, as a student, the Barbara Jordan Memorial Forum. He currently serves as an appointed member of the Oregon Metro Natural Areas and Capital Performance Oversight Committee and launched his own social-benefit communication practice in the spring of 2025. In his free time, Burt enjoys catching up with friends and family, listening to comedy podcasts, and exploring new restaurants and coffee shops around the PNW.