Tasha Cunningham
Principal
Tasha Cunningham is a principal in Cunningham Group, Inc., a strategic communications firm specializing in stakeholder engagement, public outreach and community involvement. Prior to joining the firm in September 2008, she was a Senior Planner for Parsons Transportation Group, where she was commissioned to develop, research and author the North Corridor Metrorail Extension Project (NCME) Business Assistance Program (BAP) and an accompanying implementation guide for Miami-Dade County’s Transit Department.
The BAP was created and developed to mitigate adverse impacts to the business owners who will remain along the N.W. 27th Avenue corridor in Miami-Dade County, Florida during project construction. The BAP Implementation Guide is a comprehensive, step-by-step manual created for Miami-Dade Transit with innovate recommendations on how to best execute and sustain the BAP.
Since 2002, Ms. Cunningham has served as a project management consultant with expertise in public involvement and communications on a variety of major public transportation projects including the Miami Intermodal Center, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA) Segment 5 Double Tracking Project and the NCME project.
On these projects, she coordinated media relations, supervised the production of project collateral materials, including websites and brochures and organized meetings, public hearings and workshops to educate stakeholders about each project.
Prior to her work in transportation, Ms. Cunningham served as director of communications for The Beacon Council, Miami-Dade County’s economic development agency where she handled all government affairs, media relations, marketing, communications strategy and public outreach efforts. This included marketing Miami-Dade County as a business destination for potential companies evaluating the area for possible relocation.
Ms. Cunningham also served as director of communications for the law firm of Colson, Hicks, Eidson, a nationally-recognized personal injury firm in Coral Gables, Florida. She handled media relations, production of collateral materials and served as a spokesperson for this 40-lawyer firm.
She has worked for Florida International University’s Institute for Public Opinion Research, where she learned the art of survey development, data collection and focus group recruiting. She is a member of the media having worked at the Miami Times newspaper. She is a tech columnist for the Miami Herald newspaper, where she writes a column called BizBytes 101. She has written for many other publications including the Orlando Sentinel, Black Entertainment Television and the BlackEnterprise.com, South Florida Business Journal and the Daily Business Review.
Cunningham is a member of Women in Transportation (WTS) and the American Planning Association (APA). She serves on the Board of Directors of the Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade, where she has donated both her time and monetary resources to better the lives of disadvantaged and abused women.