Title Chief Public Affairs Officer Company Taco Bell Bio As Chief Public Affairs Officer, Amy Kavanaugh promotes and protects Taco Bell’s brand reputation. With a goal of driving sales, brand equity, and stakeholder engagement and growth, she develops communications strategies that integrate traditional, digital and social media to connect with consumers, employees, and owners in meaningful ways. Amy is also the Executive Director for the Taco Bell Foundation for Teens, a non-profit organization that provides at-risk youth mentors and real-world experiences to motivate them to stay in school and graduate. Prior to joining Taco Bell in May 2011, Amy was Vice President and Global Chair of Public Engagement at Edelman Public Relations, the world’s largest privately held public relations firm. Amy joined Edelman in 2001 where she worked with a variety of clients including, MySpace, Microsoft’s MSN, The GRAMMYs, and Warner Bros. In 2004, Amy spearheaded the launch of Starbucks Entertainment and also served as Starbucks Global Client Resource Counselor. For the next seven years, she led a variety of teams in nearly 25 markets across multiple disciplines including, consumer marketing, corporate reputation management, social and digital media, consumer insights and research, crisis communications, and event marketing. Before Edelman, Amy worked at Apple Computer where she managed public relations for Power Macintosh products worldwide and initiated the company’s first influencer and customer reference program. Prior to Apple, she worked as Vice President at Shandwick/Golin-Harris in the Boston, San Francisco and Sydney offices, managing programs for Bank of America, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems overseeing the implementation of worldwide public relations programs. She began her career at SchlumbergerSema as worldwide marketing communications specialist where she managed overall outbound marketing activities in North America and Southeast Asia. Amy received her BA in Communications from UC Santa Barbara. She is a co-founder of Prosperitas, a UC-Irvine based organization that connects successful community leaders to transformative work in our communities. Amy and her husband, Ron, have two children and live in Orange County, CA where their family motto is to make a meaningful difference in the world.