Occasionally, you encounter a professional who makes the work appear effortless, not because it’s simple, but rather because they’ve spent years mastering the task. One such individual is Leigh Lehman. She doesn’t pursue visibility for its own sake or lead with loudness. She seeks out true, enduring trust, which is much more difficult to find and far more valuable to establish. Her pursuit of that goal has become the silent engine of everything she does in her role as Senior Director of Communications at GoFundMe, and the results speak for themselves.
Leigh sits at the center of one of the most mission-driven storytelling operations in the country. She shapes how GoFundMe shows up in the public eye- from small human-interest stories that remind people why the platform exists, to major crisis moments that test what a communications team is made of. She brings strategic discipline, emotional intelligence, and a personal belief that communications done right is an act of service, not to the brand, but to the people it exists to serve.
A Philosophy Built on Service, Not Spotlight
Leigh has a clear view of what communications leadership is for. It is not about volume or visibility; it is about service. She leads U.S. storytelling and global crisis response at GoFundMe with one conviction: great communications start by listening to communities, clients, critics, and the people the platform exists to help. She builds her team on trust and shared purpose, focusing on individual strengths and helping each person use them with confidence, creating a team that does not just perform well, but believes in what it is doing together.
Agency Roots and the Discipline They Built
Before GoFundMe, Leigh spent most of her career on the agency side. “Running client accounts means holding two businesses at once- the client’s goals and your own firm’s reputation. Every campaign has a ripple. Every relationship must be earned,” she states.
Leigh adds, “There is no better foundation from which to fully understand business impact than at an agency, where every decision counts.”
She carried that discipline into GoFundMe. Today, she frames every communications decision through the lens of customer impact. Credibility, Leigh believes, is not declared; it is demonstrated. Internally, this means being transparent with her team: not just announcing what is being done, but explaining the reasoning behind it, so everyone understands not just the what, but the why as well.
Stories That Actually Happened to Real People
GoFundMe’s mission, to help people help each other, is easy to say and hard to prove. Leigh’s job is to close that gap through stories that are real, measurable, and human.
The stories she points out are not manufactured. A young high-school graduate working a post-ceremony shift received more than $200,000 from community support- enough to reshape his future. The first-ever all-Black climbing team reached the summit of Mount Everest. Olympians competed on the world stage while families watched from the stands. All this was made possible only because their communities rallied behind them.
Then came January 2025. The LA Wildfires displaced thousands, and GoFundMe became a hub for relief- over $265 million raised for affected individuals and nonprofits. For Leigh, who oversaw the response while living in Los Angeles and navigating the on-the-ground realities of that crisis in real time, that moment clarified what her team’s role truly is: not just amplifying stories, but stewarding them. It reinforced her conviction that every narrative they lift must carry dignity, urgency, and, above all, real hope.
Fast When Needed. Trusted Always.
Modern communications runs fast. News cycles have compressed. The window between an event and the public’s expectation of a response can be minutes. Leigh navigates that pressure without rushing carelessly. GoFundMe operates with strong internal frameworks, clear escalation pathways, and a firm commitment to its Terms of Service. These structures allow her team to act quickly without sacrificing accuracy or empathy. Being fast is tactical, she says. Being trusted is strategic.
In the middle of a crisis, Leigh returns to three questions: What is true? What is helpful? What reflects the mission? Clarity comes from facts. Composure comes from preparation. Empathy comes from remembering that behind every news cycle are real people in the middle of something hard. Leigh’s role in those moments is to steady the room. She does not see that as optional. She sees it as a core responsibility of leadership.
Developing People Who Grow into Themselves
Leigh’s approach to mentoring is built on one core belief: confidence grows when people see their strengths genuinely recognised and put to real use. She pays attention to what each person does best- managing press relationships, building a narrative frame, or holding steady when a crisis arrives-and gives them meaningful ownership of exactly that. Leigh pushes them to zoom out, to think beyond the immediate headline and consider the larger story arc, and to attempt things that feel just beyond their current reach. Empowerment, she says, is not about lowering standards. It is about pairing high expectations with the genuine belief that someone can meet them.
The Perspective She Brings and Insists Others Bring Too
Leigh is a woman of color in an industry that has not always made room for people like her. She does not set that identity aside at the door. She carries it into every strategy session and every story decision because it helps her see things others might miss and ask questions others might not think about raising. Her upbringing and lived experience shape how she reads communities and thinks about access. Leigh is proud of that perspective, and she actively encourages every person on her team to bring the same kind of full, honest self to the work.
GoFundMe’s storytelling must reflect the real diversity of the communities it serves. That is not a branding objective for Leigh. It is a moral one. When the team’s work carries an authentic human perspective, she says, it can bring more help to more people. Authenticity, in her view, is not a soft quality. It is the strategy itself.
What Great Communications Leadership Looks Like Now
Senior communications leadership has changed. Leigh has watched that shift up close. A decade ago, the job was largely about message management. Today it is about building a shared identity for an organization from the inside out. Executive narratives need cultural awareness, authenticity, and evidence that the mission is real. In a world where trust can erode overnight, reputation lives in the alignment between words and actions. GoFundMe sees itself as tech for good. Leigh treats that as a standard, not a slogan.
She also knows that communication cannot operate apart from business. Working in close alignment with Product, Trust & Safety, Social, and Policy teams, she ensures every narrative reflects both the organization’s innovation and its accountability. The most effective communications strategy, she says, is one built alongside the business, not dropped on top of it.
The Lessons That Travel With Her
Two truths have stayed with Leigh across every role she has held. The first: impact accumulates. The $265 million wildfire response matters. So does the small business that kept its doors open, the student who got to go to college, the family that made it through a hard month. Those quiet stories are not footnotes. They are the points. The second: composure spreads. In a crisis, a team takes its cues from its leader. If she is steady, they find their footing. Leigh leads with that awareness- steadily, focused on what actually matters.
A Legacy That Is Already Taking Shape
When Leigh looks ahead, she talks about connection more than content. The communicators who will endure are those who understand that storytelling’s deepest purpose is to show people what they share- the threads of humanity beneath any news cycle.
The legacy she is building is grounded in trust, inclusion, and impact that people can feel. She wants to shape narratives that reflect the full range of human experience, mentor the next generation of communicators, and keep proving that when people decide to help each other, something remarkable happens. Leigh is not chasing a louder voice or a bigger platform. She is doing the harder, more lasting work- earning trust that does not disappear when the headline does. By every measure that matters, she is doing it right.
