Doug Meffley began his Northwestern career as an athletic communications work-study student in 2002 and has worked his way up to his current position of Athletics Director of Digital and Social Communications. Meffley and his staff have oversight of NU athletics content strategies, serving as a liaison among marketing, communications and ticketing. He also oversees NUsports.com, NU's athletics social media efforts and remains the primary communications contact for Northwestern softball.
Meffley graduated from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism with a BSJ in 2004 and earned a master's degree in integrated marketing communications from Medill in 2016. He also completed a Medill certificate course on Content Strategy in 2014 and a Kellogg School of Management certificate program in 2017.
Meffley's social media campaigns were featured by Crain's Chicago Business in the publication's "Best of Social Marketing" for 2012 and have received national press from such outlets as Yahoo! Sports. He was a featured panelist in PR Week Magazine's September 2015 "Brand Content Consumers Notice and Remember: The Content Marketing Roundtable."
Meffley currently serves on the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-America Award committee and was part of the team for the first NCAA Champions Forum held in conjunction with the 2011 Women's College World Series. He has lectured and contributed to multiple conferences on social media topics, and has delivered lectures on softball scoring (2012), "Competing for Media Exposure" via social media (2014) and "Advanced Social Media Platforms" (2017) at the annual CoSIDA National Convention. He was co-founder of the Medill School of Journalism and Northwestern Athletics co-branded "Beyond the Box Score" lecture series, which ran from 2012-15.
In addition to his work in digital and social content strategy, Meffley is a professional public address announcer and emcee. Meffley has served as the PA announcer at home events for many of Northwestern's varsity programs including football and basketball, and has spent 14 seasons as the Voice of NU softball. He announces around the Chicagoland area, including as the Voice of the Chicago Bandits -- a member of National Pro Fastpitch -- since the franchise's inception in 2005. Meffley performs press box public address duties at the Big Ten Football Championship game, moderates the Big Ten football media days opening session and was a finalist out of more than 3,000 entries in the Chicago Cubs' Voice of Wrigley Field open audition in 2011.
Meffley earned the Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout Award at the age of 14 and spent three summers as a Ranger on staff at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M., teaching outdoor and leadership skills. While attending Northwestern, he completed newsroom internships at The Crescent-News (Defiance, Ohio) and the Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.). A native of Defiance, Ohio, where he was a three-year captain and three-time all-league selection with the DHS soccer team, Meffley resides in Evanston with his wife, Maureen Palchak, his son, Jackson, and his daughter, Eliza.
