As chief communications and marketing officer for AARP, Martha Boudreau is spokesperson for the nation’s largest social mission organization and its 38 million members, one of the most influential lobbying groups in the country. That leadership role in Washington and beyond makes her a deserving recipient of one of our 2024 SABRE Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement.

Boudreau, who will receive her award at the SABRE Awards ceremony at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street on May 1, is responsible for integrating brand, marketing, consumer experience and communications strategies across the organization, and also for unifying AARP’s voice across social, digital, events, earned and paid media, along with AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin.

Shortly after joining AARP, Boudreau established, and has since built out the consumer experience practice across the organization. The group has established CX strategy, metrics, governance, employee training and Voice of the Customer measurement. She is also responsible for AARP’s consumer contact centers, which handle more than three million calls annually plus additional consumer contacts through the group’s “help network.”

“Martha Boudreau is one of my favorite people in the marketing and communications space,” says John Saunders, global chief executive of FleishmanHillard and a recipient of the Outstanding Individual Achievement award last year. “She is immensely talented, energetic, collegiate, charming and an inspiration to all those she encounters.

“At AARP she leads a team responsible for the recruitment and retention of nearly 40 million members. That’s an extraordinary number of people and I am also proud to say I too am an AARP member who thinks they do a phenomenal job articulating the very many benefits to being part of AARP.

“I sometimes joke with Martha that I am so glad she left FleishmanHillard before I was appointed CEO as had she been here, I would not have got the job. She thinks I am joking. I am being serious.”

Before joining AARP, Boudreau served as president of the Mid-Atlantic region and Latin America for FleishmanHillard. She served on the company’s global management committee and was a key figure in growing the firm’s presence in the Middle East and its expansion into Latin America. She was also central to the global coordination of client work and new business efforts.

Boudreau started her career in Washington working on Capitol Hill and for the Columbia Institute, a research firm focused on the factors influencing congressional decision-making.

She is a member of the Arthur Page Society as well as the PR Seminar and the International Women’s Forum. She serves on the boards of the Center for International Private Enterprise, the American Bird Conservancy and Ford’s Theater.