Teresa Valerio Parrot

Teresa Valerio Parrot often says that while her husband is her true love, her alma mater was her first love. She reenergizes when she steps onto a college campus and TVP Communications’ clients can verify that she lights up when she visits. Higher education is her love and her home.

She is known for her honesty juxtaposed with optimism, and the two combine to provide communications counsel that is focused on transparency and relationship building. Teresa describes her job as helping education executives truthfully share excellence and genuinely own mistakes through their communications and actions, because she knows honesty is present in all sound proactive and crisis outreach. She serves as TVP Communications’ resident “president whisperer” for her ability to get senior administrators to share their thought leadership expertise.

With over two decades of work in higher education, Teresa has only known a career focused on making higher education relatable, presidents’ and boards’ decisions understandable, and student and faculty successes known. She served as senior vice president for Widmeyer Communications’ higher education practice and vice president of media relations and crisis communications for SimpsonScarborough.

Her first job out of college was as special assistant to the president of the University of Colorado, a job she landed by convincing the system president that she would make it her own and make him proud. She served the Boulder campus chancellor as director of donor relations during the University’s successful $1 billion fundraising campaign and held an officer-level appointment as assistant secretary of the university system, in which capacity she assisted the board on policy and media/PR issues over two years filled with athletic and academic controversy that drew national and international headlines.

If her first home is a campus, then her second home is on an airplane and her third is on stage as a keynote and conference presenter. Teresa has spoken on behalf of nearly every acronym in higher education’s alphabet soup, including the American Council on Education, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the Association of Governing Boards, the American Marketing Association, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, NASPA, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, United Educators, and a range of other organizations nationally and internationally. In 2014, she was awarded the Crystal Apple Award for Teaching Excellence by CASE for earning an average combined score of 4.5 (out of five) or above on their session evaluations at 10 different CASE educational programs. And she is proud to return to the planning committee for the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education and serve through 2025.

She serves as co-host of the Trusted Voices Podcast, and founding co-editor and contributor to the Inside Higher Ed blog, Call to Action, which is focused on marketing and communications topics in higher education. She has by-lined pieces for The Hechinger Report, Trusteeship, Times Higher Ed, The Presidency, College & University Journal, University Business, Inside Higher Ed, Women in Higher Education and PR Week; and contributed a chapter to the book, Managing the Unthinkable: Crisis Preparation and Response for Campus Leaders. Her expertise has been featured in the Associated Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, U.S. News & World Report, The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, CURRENTS, The Missoulian, The News Telegram and Montana Public Radio. And she is honored to have been featured on a variety of podcasts including The Key, Higher Voltage, Enrollment Insights, Josie and the Podcast, The Servant Marketer, Higher Ed Geek, and Enrollify’s Starter Stories.

Teresa earned a bachelor’s degree in communications with a minor in environmental biology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a master’s degree in public administration with emphases in state and local government and non-profit management from the University of Colorado Denver. Teresa was awarded a doctoral degree in higher education policy and leadership from Southern Methodist University, and holds accreditation in public relations from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

She serves on the boards of directors of PRSA, the Colorado-based Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD), and KUNC public radio and The Colorado Sound. She is a member of the Denver Ballet Guild. She lives in Longmont, Colorado, with her husband and dogs. Don’t get her started on how amazing her college-aged daughter is unless you have a spare hour or two. Or three. Each year she threatens to become a runner and instead spends her time traveling with her family.

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