Brandi Bates
Brandi Bates is the Public Information Officer for the Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioners in the Florida panhandle. Skilled in social media, community and media relations, public involvement, design and photography/videography, Brandi is also experienced in crisis communications for the public sector. During large scale disasters, she deploys with the Northwest Florida All-Hazards Incident Management Team as their public information officer. She served in Pasco, Clay and Collier counties during the and after the impact of Hurricane Irma, and in Washington and Bay counties following Hurricane Michael.
Brandi graduated from the FEMA Master Public Information Officer Program in September 2019 with a capstone research paper on social media trolls. Since then, she has spoken at several regional and national events on how to counter negative feedback on social media and published several articles on the topic of social media trolls.
She was awarded 2019 Communicator of the Year by the Pensacola chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association and holds a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from Eckerd College.