Pam Hersh
With decades of experience as a writer, editor, and public and government affairs authority, Pam Hersh started working for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities (NJASCU) in 2015 as a director of Communications and Public Affairs, a position she assumed when her nine-year “Project Job” with Princeton HealthCare System (PHCS) came to a most successful conclusion. As NJASCU communications director, she is in charge of media relations, several publications, social media and website content, and an annual higher education symposium and sponsorship program, which she created in 2016. She also plays a major role in the association’s government affairs and education policy analysis activities, including state budget analysis.
At Princeton HealthCare System, she was vice president for Government and Community Affairs, (PHCS), working nearly exclusively on the relocation of the acute care hospital from Princeton to Plainsboro, a $550 million project. Drawing on her extensive skills and professional experience in communications, public affairs, and government affairs, in New Jersey, she was responsible for implementing a strategy of federal, state, local government and community relations to support the day-to-day operations of Princeton HealthCare System (PHCS), particularly related to the hospital relocation. She had a major role in crafting the new hospital communications strategy and was the point person with all media on issues related to the hospital relocation. The government affairs work was focused on the state and local government challenges involved in the redevelopment of the former hospital site in Princeton and the new hospital site in Plainsboro. In coordination with state, county and municipal officials, she developed the transportation strategy for getting patients and employees to the new hospital. In addition, she played a major role in new hospital fund-raising and friend-raising development strategies that included her conceiving and implementing the publication a coffee table book Designed for Healing honoring the nearly 100-year-old hospital.
Prior to joining Princeton HealthCare System, Ms. Hersh was the director of Princeton University’s Office of Community and State Affairs from 1990 to 2006. She was part of every team dealing with major development projects, such as the expansion of the Engineering School, the construction of the Campus Center, and the development of the Forrestal Center Campus. She was the “town/gown” expert at the local government level and a higher education and tax-exempt charitable non-profit expert at the state government level. In her community role, she created and implemented Princeton University’s Community Auditing Program, allowing residents to “audit” classes at Princeton University, as well as created and wrote several town/gown publications.
Before 1990, Ms. Hersh worked as a writer and editor, including serving as Managing Editor of The Princeton Packet. She still writes a weekly column for The Princeton Packet. She is the editor of two New Jersey government affairs books:
-- New Jersey’s Multiple Municipal Madness, authored by the former Speaker of the New Jersey State Assembly Alan Karcher.
-- A Tale of Two Tigers: Princeton’s Historic Consolidation, authored by the former Princeton Township Mayor Chad Goerner – the last and final mayor of the township. She also edited NJ architectural historian Clifford Zink’s book: The Roebling Legacy.
Before her career in communications and government affairs, Ms. Hersh was an information analyst/Russian language linguist with the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, and a Russian Language Specialist for the Rutgers University Library System.
Over the past decade, she has held leadership roles on the boards of several community non-profits, including Mercer County Community College, Princeton Transportation Advisory Committee, the Princeton Adult School Board, Plainsboro Library Foundation Board. Greater Mercer Transportation Management Association, Regional Plan Association (NJ Committee). Currently, her major volunteer project is being co-owner and editor of The Highland Park Planet, an online hyper-local community news site dedicated to objectivity and excellence in local journalism and in serving the community needs of Highland Park New Jersey residents. The project went live in November, 2014.
Ms. Hersh graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Russian from Douglass College, Rutgers University, and an MS in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University. She completed graduate certificate programs in Russian Studies at Georgetown University and in non-profit management at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard University. She has received numerous writing awards from the New Jersey Press Association (the most recent award – a first place honor for local interest column writing - March 2017) and a Presidential Achievement Award from Princeton University. The Princeton YWCA honored her with a “Tribute” Award in 1988.