Jessica Burda Leslie oversees the internationally-recognized Wisconsin Athletics website — UWBadgers.com — and UW digital presence, including other athletics websites and the Wisconsin Badgers app. She also manages communications and social media for the nationally-ranked Wisconsin wrestling team and the Badgers’ men’s and women’s golf teams.
She previously served as the Director of Brand Communications at Wisconsin from 2019-2022 after serving as the Director of Digital Content from 2016-2019. While continuing work with the Badgers in the spring of 2022, she also served as the Director of Marketing for an external professional rugby league (Premier Rugby Sevens) for four months to help launch the organization’s first competitive season with a national tournament series.
In her prior roles with the Badgers, she led the Badgers' talented team overseeing all brand management, storytelling, media and public relations and social media of Wisconsin's 23 varsity sports teams and the athletic department overall. She also directly oversaw day-to-day operations of UWBadgers.com, including a full redesign in 2018 and a redesign of the Badgers app to support digital ticketing in 2021. She played a key role in developing, editing and promoting the original content produced by UWBadgers.com Senior Writer Mike Lucas and UWBadgers.com Insider Andy Baggot as well as the UW video services and brand communications staffs. The stories of the Badgers reach millions of people each day across the country and the world, in addition to being one of the strongest collegiate athletic department brands in the country.
Burda Leslie began her professional career with Wisconsin Athletics as a sports information assistant from 2002-04 and was the primary contact for UW men’s soccer, women’s hockey and wrestling. She later worked in both the public and private sector in Madison, including communication and marketing for the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce and in Dissemination and Implementation as a research communication specialist at the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Through her work at ICTR, she helped doctors and public health researchers develop dissemination and communication plans, assisted with grant applications, taught social media strategies and planned an annual multi-day education short course on the emerging scientific field of D&I research.
Burda Leslie received a Bachelor’s degree in mass communication from UW-Stevens Point in 2000 then earned a Master’s in strategic communication from Wisconsin in 2002. She has completed additional master’s coursework in athletic administration at UW-Whitewater.
In addition to her full-time responsibilities, Burda Leslie served as the co-host of the Wisconsin Women’s Sports Hour on WTSO-AM from 2009-10. She has been a longtime member of the local rugby community as an athlete, volunteer coach and administrator, including serving as co-captain (Forwards/Scrum) for her local club team’s 2015 USA Rugby Division 2 national championship. She currently also serves as a Coach Educator with USA Rugby and World Rugby. She was awarded a 2019 Premiership Rugby scholarship to spend a week in England learning with 25 other U.S. coaches with three of the top Premiership clubs (Wasps, Northampton Saints and Leicester Tigers).
A native of Fish Creek in beautiful Door County, Wis., Burda Leslie lives in Madison with her husband Tim, a quality assurance expert for a local electronic medical records software company and fellow rugby athlete. She also provides communication, marketing and social media consulting for her family’s retail art and gift boutique, Artsy Fartsy Madison, located on nearby Monroe St.
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