Berta Rodriguez

Berta comes to the Institute with over 25 years of experience in strategic marketing and communications, public policy, qualitative research, and community engagement. Her focus has been engagement and outreach in Latino markets at the city, state, national, and international levels through effective and relevant messaging using cross-cultural consumer research and data analysis.

Most recently, she served as the City of San Antonio’s External Affairs Manager and Census Administrator. Her responsibilities included establishing a baseline approach for equitable community engagement, developing systems and standard operating procedures to lower the barriers for public participation and measure engagement levels within marginalized communities across the city.

Prior to her work at the City, Berta served as the inaugural Director of Research, Planning, and Policy at Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc. She was instrumental in developing and implementing the organization’s research and policy efforts to improve the physical, mental, and behavioral healthcare access and delivery in the organization’s 74 -county South Texas service area.

She served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development and the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. As a political appointee she was the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary and General Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing and a legislative aide in the Senate Veterans Affairs / Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee.

Berta earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing at University of Texas at San Antonio and Master of Science in Urban Studies at Trinity University.