Susanna Elliott
Susanna Elliott
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
As chief marketing and communications officer, Susanna Elliott leads a 130-person global team to advance the company’s purpose of Working Together for a Planet of Plenty™. Through data, insights and relevant content creation, the team provides thought leadership, rich resources and inspiration relevant to agriculture’s challenges and opportunities.
Most recently, Elliott served as Alltech’s chief of staff and director of communications. In these roles, she worked closely with Alltech president and CEO Dr. Mark Lyons and the executive team to support the business through the global challenges of 2020-2023. The position afforded her unique visibility of the entire global business, a perspective that now informs her leadership of Alltech’s global marketing and communications strategy.
Elliott has held various communications roles at Alltech, including head of communications and corporate communications manager. She has managed a global team and communications strategy during some of Alltech's most significant moments, including when 20 mergers and acquisitions vaulted the company from $500 million to $2 billion in the span of a few short years and when the company founder, Dr. Pearse Lyons, unexpectedly passed away in 2018. She specializes in reputation management/crisis communications, corporate and executive communication, and editorial strategy.
She worked with the global communications team to develop the company’s first online newsroom, first global press kit — the winner of a Gold ADDY Award — and significantly increased the company’s media coverage, including first-time coverage of its core animal nutrition business in top-tier general media. In addition, she facilitated integration of the company's content marketing, in part through the creation of a creative agency approach, which she led.
Elliott was the public relations manager for Alltech’s $32 million title sponsorship investment in the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games™ 2010. She helped the animal nutrition brand introduce itself on a global stage, working with more than 1,100 media from 60 countries on-site during the 16-day Games to secure Alltech’s first network and mainstream media interviews. She also crafted the communications strategy for Alltech’s unique global partnership for the Games with 67 companies in 38 countries. Alongside these major initiatives, she developed the communications strategy for the Alltech Fortnight Festival, a three-year statewide entertainment extravaganza with more than 100 concerts.
She is active in supporting the agri-food industry, serving on the American Feed Industry Association Board of Directors and the CLEAR Center’s advisory council at the University of California, Davis. Elliott is a graduate of Alltech’s Mini-MBA executive management program, which is held in conjunction with University College Dublin. Additionally, she has received certification from the Institute for Crisis Management and is a member of Alltech’s crisis/reputation leadership team. She received a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Asbury University and served as an assistant to the governor of Kentucky prior to joining the Alltech team in 2008.
