Janel Lacy

Janel spent a large portion of her early career developing and executing communications strategies for former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, starting with his first campaign for mayor in 2007. During her seven years in the Mayor’s Office, she helped spearhead the communications involved in the successful passage of major development projects such as the Music City Center and Ascend Amphitheater. She led the highly-lauded media and public information response to the devastating city-wide floods in May 2010, and she managed major public initiatives like Mayor Dean’s Walk 100 Miles campaign featured on the HBO documentary series Weight of the Nation. Janel left the Mayor’s Office in 2014 when she was recruited to lead the communications and family relations departments for Metro Nashville Public Schools. She oversaw a 21-person team and managed an annual budget over $2 million. During her tenure with MNPS, she restructured both departments to better serve families and staff. She created effective community engagement processes for issues like school rezonings, carved out a dedicated internal communications team to service the district’s 10,000 employees, and designed and implemented a family-focused service model for the district’s call center. Janel began her career as a journalist, covering growth and development, banking, finance and residential real estate for the Nashville Business Journal.