By MARISSA COOPERSMITH
J Alumni News staff
Sheri Cross Sallee
In Sacramento, Calif., small-town Nebraska girl and J school alumna, Sheri Cross Sallee, works as the communications director for one of the nation’s leading health-care networks, Sutter Health.
On any given day, Sallee can be found in her office or in one of Sutter’s hospitals working with her colleagues throughout northern California. As communications director, Sallee creates new communication strategies and directs the organization’s internal communications. But in the midst of long hours and hectic days, Sallee never forgets her Nebraska roots.
Growing up in North Platte, Sallee set her sights on UNL.
As a student, she joined a sorority, the student chapter of the Red Cross, the Student Foundation and Mortar Board. In the J school, she worked with Ad Club and the Student Advisory Board, serving as its president her senior year.
“I feel like the opportunities I was given at the J school made me much more adaptable because there’s always going to be times in your career when you’re asked to do communications that aren’t within your comfort zone,” Sallee said.
One of the most memorable experiences as a student took place during the school’s J Days when Sallee spoke to several hundred people on behalf of her class before introducing the keynote speaker. Though the experience was nerve-wracking, Sallee said she was honored to acknowledge all the great work her class of ’95 had accomplished.
Being nudged toward the real world
Sallee said she appreciated that J school professors recognized the competitiveness of the job market and always encouraged students to gain real-world experience through internships before graduation.
“There’s going to be a lot of qualified people, but you need to have experience and have a few more things that can differentiate you,” Sallee said. She said her internships helped her realize she loved healthcare.
“They really did start me on my way,” she said.
Sallee landed an internship every year while at UNL: at the community hospital in her hometown, at the Nebraska Department of Health and at the University of Nebraska Foundation in its publications department. Her experiences in these internships, combined with her education, would steer her toward a successful career.
“What I saw in her that I don’t see in everyone is her ability to think critically and write as well as she thinks,” J school professor Stacy James said. “She had a very strong ability to make connections with the things she was studying or the things she was researching.”
Job offers to choose from
As a result of her internships and outstanding honors thesis, Sallee graduated with several job opportunities. She was the first PR professional to work for the National Research Corporation in Lincoln. Though there for only 18 months, Sallee said the opportunity helped define her career.
“When I was there, they were actually doing market research related to physician performance, and even in my job today as recent as a month ago, I was working with our own doctors and talking about their performance and patient satisfaction,” Sallee said.
After working for the NRC, Sallee took on strategic planning at Methodist Health System in Omaha for about a year and a half before moving to Chicago with her husband. Without a job already lined up, Sallee’s ambition and skill set would help her find success in the big city.
“I just had it in my head that I was going to work for an international PR agency, and that was when I went to work for Edelman,” she said.
At Edelman, a global public-relations firm, Sallee landed a spot in the health-sector department, where she was first introduced to researching new cancer treatments. Instead of market research, she was now involved with biotech medicines and with patient-advocacy groups associated with colon cancer.
New opportunities via the “Today Show”
In March 2002, Sallee was working with a client who was a sponsor of Katie Couric’s colon-cancer scope of the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance. Sallee flew to New York for the “Today Show” where Couric was promoting her campaign for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. In New York, Sallee met Steve Telliano who would put another spin on her career. He invited her to work for his company, Perry Communications Group, to continue working on Couric’s campaign. The twist? Moving to Sacramento, Calif.
“It was pretty daunting, but it was certainly a great opportunity for me,” Sallee said. “I hadn’t really planned to move to California. I just felt like it was such a great opportunity, I couldn’t pass it up.”
Telliano saw a light in her he couldn’t pass up, either.
“Sheri just has an incredible wealth of knowledge about health care and managing disease,” Telliano said. “She is incredibly smart and was a great addition to our team and helped manage the campaign and take it to the next level.”
Sallee worked with Perry for about four years before being recruited to Sutter Health, a network of physician organizations, health-care providers and hospitals. Again, the opportunity presented a twist on Sallee’s skills. Perry Communications Group had been focused on public-policy work, but her job at Sutter would revolve more around internal corporate communications.
“All of Sutter’s strategic priorities are to try to change how we deliver care to patients to make it more affordable and more service oriented,” Sallee said. “I lead those communications.”
Currently, she is making sure information for patients and physicians is up to date on things like when the H1N1 vaccine will be available.
“We have patients who are eager to get it and public health officials who have a strict guideline of how we are distributing it. So it’s a patient-communication and media situation for us,” Sallee said.
At Sutter, Sallee said she’s come to live her dream job: “In healthcare in northern California, Sutter is absolutely where I would want to be. I feel really fortunate.”
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