Elizabeth Brotherton-Bunch served at AAM for more than a decade, spearheading multiple initiatives.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing’s senior vice president for communications, Elizabeth Brotherton-Bunch, is stepping down today, capping off a nearly 11-year stint leading AAM’s communications work.
A lot has happened in that period of time! Under her management, AAM’s comms team had some major successes. In 2014, Brotherton-Bunch helped organize a series of Save Our Steel Jobs events across the country in response to an import crisis. She was instrumental in AAM’s presence at the national political conventions In 2016, helping to engineer a policy discussion in the Philadelphia Museum of Art while the Democrats assembled nearby, and orchestrating the presence of a life-sized Donald Trump bobblehead doll outside the arena where Republicans gathered in Cleveland. She led AAM’s communications work through major policy and legislative victories like the announcement of major steel import tariffs in 2018 and passage of legislation like the Transportation Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act in 2019 and the Build America, Buy America Act in 2021, along with two website redesigns and the management of a steady churn of communications interns.
Over her tenure, Brotherton-Bunch grew AAM’s annual Made in America Holiday Gift Guide from a simple list to a juggernaut of Made in USA gifting. She led Team AAM in cultivating a list of more than 100 unique American manufacturers and makers every year, garnering a front-page Wall Street Journal feature for the Guide in 2023. Brotherton-Bunch’s enthusiasm for Made in America shopping was infectious and helped make the Guide a staff and reader favorite. Similarly, her expansion of the Made in America Directory as a resource for American-made shopping empowered users to reinvest their valuable shopping dollars back into their communities.
That’s not all she did. She was a great editor, helping to shape some of our most thoughtful blog posts into polished products. Brotherton-Bunch spearheaded the launch of AAM’s podcast, The Manufacturing Report, to further grow AAM’s public outreach and humanize American manufacturing issues. Her deep knowledge of American manufacturing and U.S. trade made her a go-to resource for journalists on the fast-fashion trade and its ethics. She even successfully produced the documentary, Relighting the Flame, which appeared at several film festivals and aired multiple times on a PBS affiliate.
And, notably, she knew all the funniest bits from The Simpsons.
AAM has benefited from her leadership all these years, and her absence won’t be easily filled. But she’s left our organization’s communications staff in a much stronger position than where she found it. For that, we’re grateful.
We’ll miss you, Beth! And we wish you the best of luck on your next gig!