Shannon Buggs ....................................................................City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Complete Communities

Shannon Buggs

2022 TRAILBLAZER

Shannon Buggs is the founding director of the City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Complete Communities. In this role, Ms. Buggs develops strong collaborative relationships with neighborhood residents, City of Houston departments, other government agencies and officials, private donors, and non-profit organizations to fulfill the Complete Communities vision. In 2017, Mayor Sylvester Turner launched the Complete Communities initiative to demonstrate how public, private, and non-profit partners can revive neighborhoods with the guidance of their residents. Every Houstonian should know their neighborhood matters and Complete Communities is the City’s equity initiative designed to build one complete city from recovery to resilience. By championing the voices of residents that have been ignored for far too long, Complete Communities strives to offer every Houston resident access to the foundational quality of life resources needed to thrive. Before joining Mayor Turner’s executive leadership team, Ms. Buggs worked as director of community and public relations at The Woman's Hospital of Texas and as director of communication for the University of Houston’s College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences. Also, for more than a decade, she wrote a personal finance column and covered financial services and banking for her hometown newspaper, the Houston Chronicle. Ms. Buggs was the executive director of Culture Source, Inc. (formerly CultureWorks Greater Houston), a fiscal sponsorship and management consulting nonprofit. She also launched and nurtured Meta-Four Houston, a nonprofit youth development collective that uses writing and performing original poetry as tools to encourage self-expression and advance literacy among Houston’s youth ages 13 – 19. Meta-Four is now an active program of Writers in the Schools, the literary arts nonprofit that she served on the board of for six years. A Houston native, Ms. Buggs is a longtime supporter of the city’s nonprofit sector and has held volunteer leadership positions with the Harvey Arts Recovery Fund, Houston Arts Alliance, Junior League of Houston, and Girls, Inc. She is a Diamond Life member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and a financial member of the Houston Alumnae Chapter. Ms. Buggs is also active in the Houston Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc. and is a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Gulf Coast Chapter. Her commitment to the arts and public service has been recognized with numerous accolades including being named an Outstanding Young Houstonian and Outstanding Young Texan by the local and state chapters of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. An alumna and former trustee of Episcopal High School in Bellaire, Ms. Buggs earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American Literature from Harvard University, a Master of Science degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and a certificate in financial planning from the University of Houston. She is the proud mother of two outstanding young people, her daughter Avery, and her son O’Neal.

Shannon Buggs Director, City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Complete Communities (832) 393-1085 shannon.buggs@houstontx.gov