Jessica Schindelar, ’02, was hired by the college as the new associate vice president for the marketing and communications department.
While at Allegheny, Schindelar was a neuroscience major and an art history minor, and for the last 15 years she worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Schindelar became interested in communications while earning her master of public health from Emory University, where she began thinking of how to combine communications with her neuroscience and public health degrees.
“How can we apply behavioral science and psychology to help influence people’s behaviors? How do we talk about behavior changes and things like that? And, communications is a really important way to do that,” Schindelar said in an interview with The Campus via videoconference from Atlanta. “I feel like I’ve always kind of been drawn to communications, but I come at it from a little bit of a different angle because of my neuroscience and behavioral science background.”
At the CDC, Schindelar took on many roles, starting as a health communication specialist in 2010 and ascending the ranks to her final position as chief of the content and engagement branch. One major project during her time at the agency was establishing the CDC’s social media presence.
“I was one of the founding members of a team there, so (we) helped establish a lot of the processes and just how we worked in that space and helped teach the community at CDC, how we were going to use social media to communicate,” Schindelar said.
Following that, she transitioned to work in healthcare communications for the CDC. “I moved into a role where I did some like, healthcare communications work where I led some different campaigns, integrated marketing campaigns,” Schindelar said. “It was during that time that I led healthcare communications work for the COVID response. So that was a very intense period of a lot of crisis communication.”
Schindelar described her new role at Allegheny as being focused on marketing and communication activities all across the campus community.
“Some of our kind of initial priorities are around driving enrollment,” Schindelar said. “So we’re trying to work with the enrollment team to help market the college, to increase recruitment.”
Additionally, she hopes to improve the Allegheny College website and make it more accessible and appealing to prospective students and their families.
“We want to do a lot more of telling the stories of the Allegheny community,” Schindelar said. “Our students are doing amazing work. Our faculty is doing amazing work. We have really outstanding alumni who have had successful outcomes out of college. We’ve got great athletics programs and on-campus activities that we’re going to do a lot of really targeted and thoughtful strategic communication pushes to tell those stories in more places, and in different ways and on different themes around, you know, what makes Allegheny such an amazing place.”
Assistant Vice President of Institutional Advancement Sara Pineo said she is excited for future collaborations between the Office of Institutional Advancement and the Marketing and Communications department.
“We work hand in hand because all of the communications that go out to our external audience and our alumni, that comes through us, and we need to make sure we’re in step with what the marketing team is putting out as well,” Pineo said.
Schindelar is going to be actively involved with the collaboration between the offices, she added.
“She’s really going to be kind of a central piece for ensuring that the voice of Allegheny College, both internally and externally, is consistent and authentic,” Pineo said.
Additionally, Pineo hopes that they are able to “quickly and nimbly complete really important projects” in order to help put the college in front of prospective students, alumni and potential donors.
“Then also frame, you know, the work that’s happening here within our campus in a way that’s the most effective and useful for our work,” Pineo continued.
Prior to Schindelar being hired, the position was vacant for a long time, according to Pineo.
One future collaboration with Schindelar that Pineo is excited for is the 12th annual Gator Give Day on Thursday, April 16, 2026. Marketing and Communications and Institutional Advancement are collaborating to make this Gator Give Day “Jump Into Allegheny” themed, with a larger focus on social media presence compared to previous years.
“Even though you’ve done this for 11 years prior to this, we always try to reimagine and be creative, think outside the box,” Pineo said. “She (Schindelar) and I meet weekly, and we work through a really detailed plan and brainstorm ways to be able to continue to be surprising and fun and delightful and also raise a lot of money for the college.”
