Dr. Denise Erskine Meusa

Dr. Denise Erskine-Meusa brings over 20 years of executive speechwriting, strategic communications, and documentation leadership across federal agencies including DOJ, USAID, FDA, VA, NIH, DOS, CSOSA, CMS, and ACF. For nearly 18 years, she has taught public speaking and communication to adult learners at five universities—where students have called her inspirational, skilled, and a master storyteller. That classroom expertise sharpens every speech she writes and every messaging strategy she builds. She holds a Secret clearance.

At ACF, she served as a speechwriter, crafting executive communications on behalf of agency leadership. At DOJ, she led a 10-person writing team during COVID-19, managing editorial workflows for sensitive materials on congressional hearings covering human trafficking, policing reform, drug enforcement, juvenile justice, and violence against women. She developed talking points for USAID's Deputy Administrator on critical pandemic workplace policies and delivered crisis communications under compressed timelines while maintaining federal compliance. As Senior Policy Writer at CSOSA, she led development of the agency's first AI usage policy, collaborating with the Office of General Counsel, IT security, and operational stakeholders to balance workforce productivity, data protection under the Privacy Act and FISMA, and mission-critical safeguarding of offender information. She established expedited review processes, translated complex regulatory requirements into accessible employee guidance, and built consensus through transparent stakeholder communication.

Her core expertise spans executive communications—speechwriting, strategic messaging, and speech coaching—alongside public affairs and regulatory positioning, crisis management, cybersecurity and IT documentation, healthcare regulatory writing, and stakeholder engagement across legal, technical, and operational teams.

Dr. Erskine-Meusa's Doctorate in Organizational Leadership & Development from Morgan State University equips her to anticipate stakeholder resistance, design communications strategies that drive alignment, and lead cross-functional teams through complex policy implementations. Her process improvements reduced documentation development time by 40% through reusable templates and governance frameworks. She also holds a Master's in Communications from The New School, a Bachelor's in Communications from Brooklyn College, and is a Prosci® Certified Change Practitioner. All deliverables meet Section 508 accessibility and plain language standards.