Leadership

Elise Durham

Assistant General Manager, Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs

Elise Durham, a two-time Emmy® and five-time Telly® award-winning journalist and communications professional with nearly 30 years of experience, is assistant general manager of Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs for the world’s busiest and most efficient airport. In this role, she oversees the Marketing, Communications, Community Affairs and ATL Experiences teams.

This is Durham’s third time leading a department at Hartsfield-Jackson. She previously served as assistant general manager of Airport Business Diversity and as ATL’s director of Policy and Communications. In the latter role, she was responsible for the positive media coverage of ATL’s handling of Super Bowl LIII, the Airport’s capital improvement program known as ATLNext, crisis communications, and ATL’s commercial filming and photography program.

Durham has served as the director of Communications and a member of the executive cabinet for the City of Atlanta for two administrations, offering strategic counsel to previous Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and current Mayor Andre Dickens.

Durham’s storied broadcast career includes a stint as executive producer for Special Projects at the CBS affiliate in Atlanta. She has worked at some of the most well-respected television stations in the country, including the market leaders in two Florida cities and in Houston, Texas. She led the expansion of Good Day Atlanta, the flagship franchise across all local Fox- affiliated stations. As a senior producer at Atlanta’s WSB-TV, she produced the 11 p.m. and 5 p.m. newscasts, rated No. 1 in the country.

Durham also spent many years leading the Media Relations and Communications team at Morehouse College, where she was both Media Relations Manager and Executive Director of Strategic Communications.

A former associate vice president of Communications, Marketing and Media Relations at her alma mater, Florida A&M University, Durham earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. She is an inductee into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle and is a life member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and she is a member of the Magnolia (GA) chapter of The Links, Incorporated.