Dr. Wallington serves as executive vice president and chief marketing and communications officer for Cone Health, a $3 billion healthcare system with more than 15,000 employees. He reports directly to the CEO as one of 10 members of the most senior executive leadership team. When he joined Cone Health in 2011, he set about transforming the marketing and communications function from order-takers to strategic thought partners, a shift that now sees his team recognized as integral advisors to business leaders across the organization. Dr. Wallington played a pivotal role in helping Cone Health develop and announce a $150 million commitment to a health equity strategy in 2024, and his unique perspective as a Black man has shaped the system’s outreach to underserved populations, including leading vaccine hesitancy campaigns that resulted in the highest minority vaccination rates in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina. A nationally recognized champion for diversity in public relations, his master’s thesis on Black men in the PR profession was named one of the “Top 15 Public Relations Research Insights of 2020,” and his Ph.D. dissertation has been published as “A Seat at the C-Suite Table: Insights from the Leadership Journeys of African American Executives.” In 2025, Dr. Wallington was named an “Industry Legend” by the Diversity Action Alliance, its highest honor, and received the 2024 “Betsy Plank Award” for lifetime commitment to mentoring. He also serves as a PRSA director-at-large and is a board member of the Institute for Public Relations and the Diversity Action Alliance.
