Vickie Gogo, MA, APR

Senior Partner, Multicultural Communications, ICF Next

Vickie is a senior partner who leads ICF Next’s multicultural communications practice. The in-house multicultural communications team provides clients depth of experience, expertise, resources, and staff who focus exclusively on authentically reaching, engaging, and communicating with communities of color. Her team has developed, implemented, and evaluated a host of communications and partner-driven campaigns designed to reach multicultural and racial and ethnic minority communities, as well as those who have been historically underserved, are socially vulnerable, and reside in rural locations.

Vickie serves as a senior strategist across multiple projects. She is a sought-after, award-winning expert in addressing and engaging African American and Black communities. She has demonstrated experience in media outreach, partnership engagement, events and exhibits, materials development, online outreach, grassroots outreach, and faith-based community engagement.

Throughout her career, she has supported health education programs focused on COVID-19, diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, maternal health, infant mortality, eye health, and other chronic conditions. She also has developed programs addressing K-12 education and testing, higher education, transportation, housing and housing safety, and employment of persons with disabilities.  Her clients have included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Office of Minority Health (OMH), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Her team’s experience includes all aspects of integrated campaigns, from formative research to creative services, content development, outreach, partnerships, promotion, social media, and earned and paid media services. They have worked alongside many U.S. federal agencies on some of the nation’s most pressing health issues: COVID-19, Zika, HIV/AIDS, tobacco control, cancer, substance use disorders, adult immunization, underage drinking, heart health, and diabetes. In addition, her team addresses the social determinants of health as they impact multicultural communities. This includes work related to transportation, education, access to healthcare, environmental factors, and food security. The team is well versed in addressing health equity and working to eliminate health disparities along with federal and commercial clients. 

Recent work highlights include: providing strategies to help engage vulnerable fenceline and frontline communities and educate them about environmental issues of most concern to them; developing creative and outreach strategies to support mitigation of COVID-19 among vulnerable multicultural communities; developing grassroots, faith-based outreach programs to encourage African Americans to live heart healthy; developing a stakeholders program to help multicultural parents and caregivers protect their children from injury; developing a partners program to help youth and teens learn about the harmful effects of tobacco; developing materials to help faith-based partners address HIV and AIDS in the African American community as a social justice issue; supporting National Diabetes Prevention Program’s grant recipients in recruiting and retaining individuals who represent underserved and vulnerable populations; supporting CDC’s opioid prevention and education efforts through partner engagement, materials development, and testimonial video storytelling; engaging with Black media to learn about and access federal health resources to develop content about the latest in sickle cell disease and cardiovascular health.

Vickie is a sought-after national speaker on multicultural communications, as well as diversity and inclusion in public relations. Prior to working at ICF Next, Vickie worked at Campbell & Company, Ogilvy, Reingold, Georgetown University and Hampton University. She began her career as a sportswriter. 

Vickie is a graduate of Hampton University, where she earned her BA in Mass Media Arts. She earned her MA in Humanities from Old Dominion University. She currently serves on the board for the Lorton Community Action Center. She is accredited in public relations from the Public Relations Society of America. She earned a certificate in nutrition science from Stanford Center for Health Education and a certificate in Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care from the Harvard Business School Online. She has won more than 50 industry awards from PRSA, PR News, the DC Ad Club, and others.