Cathy Renna
Managing Partner
Target Cue LLC
Cathy is now a Managing Partner at Target Cue.
Prior to that, she was a founder of Renna Communications. Over her seven years with the firm, Renna Communications partnered with more than 50 different organizations, including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Family Equality Council, the Point Foundation, ACT-UP, the New York LGBT Center, Congregation Beth Simchat Tora, Soulforce, Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE), the Family Acceptance Project, the Williams Institute, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and many more.
Cathy is nationally recognized as both a media relations and communications expert and a leader within the LGBT community. She has played a critical role in media related to nearly every issue affecting LGBTB populations, from high visibility issues like marriage equality and the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” to being the force behind creating more visibility for older LGBT people, homeless LGBT youth, transgender youth and a host of other populations and issues.
In the 1990′s through 2003, she was a major force behind the success and growth of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Cathy served as a primary spokesperson for GLAAD, with her final position as its first National News Media Director. She contributed to the strategic, crisis communications and community relations components of the organization’s most visible campaigns. Cathy developed the materials and curriculum for GLAAD’s popular and Ill-respected “Media Essentials” training series. In her role as Community Relations Director at GLAAD, Cathy conducted hundreds of media trainings and presentations across the country to a diverse array of progressive groups of all sizes.
With her particular expertise in crisis and strategic communications, Cathy played a central role while at GLAAD in shaping media coverage of both the beating death of Matthew Shepard in 1998, a tragedy that became a cultural marker for a shift in the level of media visibility of LGBT issues, and the sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, during which her efforts contributed to thwarting Church officials’ attempts to link the dynamic of abuse to sexual orientation. Her work with these issues continues today and she is a source and resource to media at the national and local levels on a host of issues.
In her over 20 years working in media relations and activist, Cathy has garnered placements in every major newspaper and television outlet in the country, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and a cover stories in both Time and Newsweek magazines. In addition to her work as a communications consultant, Cathy continues to be highly sought after by the media as a spokesperson on LGBT issues and has appeared on the O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, CNN, MSNBC, Good Morning America and numerous local affiliate shows throughout the country. Cathy is also a writer and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She has authored pieces published in the Washington Post, the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy and a number of other media outlets and books.
After leaving GLAAD, Cathy joined Fenton Communications as its New York office Media Director and worked with clients such as 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai and MoveOn.org. In 2006, Cathy co-founded Renna Communications in order to respond to the need for a media relations firm capable of bringing high-level communications strategies and particular expertise in LGBT issues to progressive non-profit organizations.
She lives in Montclair, NJ.