Awardee celebrated for decades of impactful service supporting AHA mission

In 1998 — 34 years after a landmark surgeon general's report held smoking responsible for a 70% higher death rate among smokers versus nonsmokers — almost a quarter of the U.S. population nonetheless smoked. That was unacceptable to the American Heart Association and other major health organizations.

That year, Robyn Landry helped cinch a seminal victory in the fight to save lives and hold tobacco companies accountable. She hasn't stopped fighting for better health ever since.

"Over her remarkable 35 years at the association, Robyn has touched nearly every function of our work, and all have been made more effective, efficient and impactful thanks to her leadership and commitment to excellence," American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown said. "Her extraordinary collaborative spirit has served to elevate our work with volunteers, strategic alliances and other key stakeholders."

Landry is the 2025 recipient of the Earl B. Beagle Award for Staff Excellence, which is presented to staff leaders whose exceptional passion for the mission and outstanding leadership make a significant impact on the association. Beagle, who began his AHA career in 1957, was greatly respected as a mentor and leader.

Landry will be recognized at the organization's National Volunteer Awards ceremony in Plano, Texas, on June 17.

Since joining the association in 1989, Landry has held multiple field-level communications positions in the organization's former Maryland and Mid-Atlantic affiliates. She served in the federal advocacy office in Washington, D.C., starting in 1995 as national director of media advocacy. At the same time, she led the communications team for the Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia media markets, and ultimately the Mid-Atlantic Affiliate.

In 1998 she moved to the American Heart Association's National Center, where she has served as the executive leader for a range of functions, including communications, health strategies, quality improvement, multicultural health, community impact, volunteerism and strategy integration.

Landry was instrumental in creating many of the association's most impactful initiatives, such as Go Red For Women®, which helps women understand and reduce their risks for heart disease. She also helped to reimagine new business models for the organization's health care quality improvement initiatives, and operationalized creative approaches for working in communities and advancing rural health.

She is known as an outstanding communicator with a tireless work ethic.

"Put simply, Robyn has an incredible ability to get things done – and done well," Brown said.

Landry also lives the mission to improve heart and brain health. The association recommends 150 minutes of activity a week. Landry and her husband, Erich Neupert, play a lot of volleyball and pickleball, and do Zumba. She's also trying to relearn German, her college language.

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In 1994, seven big tobacco CEOs testified before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. "Every one of them perjured themselves," former American Heart Association CEO Cass Wheeler later said.

Four years later, alongside Wheeler, Landry was the communications lead of the media "war room" on Capitol Hill, working with partners from the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. On Nov. 23, 1998, 52 state and territory attorneys general signed the Master Settlement Agreement with the country's four largest tobacco companies to settle dozens of state lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in health care costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses. The agreement raised cigarette prices, placed new restrictions on tobacco advertising, eliminated practices that obscured the health risks of tobacco and helped fund smoking prevention programs.

"It was a change that really impacted the whole nation," Landry said.

Although today vaping and other newer products are a threat, that major tobacco win and others continue to pay off, as shown by a significant decline in smoking rates. In 2022, an estimated 11.6% of U.S. adults smoked. That's down about 13 percentage points from 1998.

"The settlement agreement was a turning point in the war against the tobacco industry," Landry said. She has continued her tobacco control work over the years, including as a member of the AHA Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science (ATRAC) research team.

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During Landry's childhood in the Poconos, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the careers of her parents foreshadowed her professional endeavors in communicating with the public. Her mom, Judy, was a teacher, educator and school principal, while her dad, Drew, was an English professor and a writer.

"He was very outgoing, very personable, and a big influence on my brother Dana and me," Landry said. "And my mom was always a brilliant administrator who was great at getting things done."

Starting as a young girl, Landry watched heart disease touch her family. Her paternal grandfather died of a sudden, massive heart attack when she was in elementary school. Early in Landry's American Heart Association career, her maternal grandmother developed congestive heart failure. In 2011, her dad died of a massive heart attack. And her mother had atrial fibrillation, a likely contributor to dementia later in life.

Growing up, Landry developed interests that ranged from poetry to science; from all kinds of writing genres to math equations. When she was deciding on a major at Johns Hopkins University, it was a tie between bioengineering and writing, and she ultimately received her bachelor of arts degree in Writing Seminars.

She began her career at the National Kidney Foundation of Maryland, then moved to the Maryland Science Center. She dipped a toe in advertising and public relations as an account executive, but "it took me away from science and health, and I missed that," she said. In the late 1980s, Harry Bosk, who was the head of marketing and communications for the American Heart Association in Maryland, told Robyn he was moving to a new role and suggested she might apply for the job. They had gotten to know each other while serving on the board for the Public Relations Society of America in Maryland. She applied for the role and started working in marketing and communications in Baltimore for the Maryland Affiliate in 1989.

"I really liked the AHA from the start, but I never expected back then that I would be here for the rest of my career," said Landry, who today serves as the organization's executive vice president of strategy integration. "We function like a Fortune 500 organization, but we're working for a mission and a cause."

Working with a number of "amazing" volunteers, including cardiologists, business leaders, nutritionists and others, helped solidify her commitment.

"One of the things I love most about the AHA is that the people you're working with are at the very top of the field," she said. "You really grow to love that, the way you learn from people."

In 2003, Landry worked on the association's first Ad Council public service campaign, I am a Stroke, which featured celebrities such as Don Rickles, Michael Clarke Duncan and Sharon Stone. It was the forerunner to the AHA program she and her team led to broaden the association's work with celebrities and the entertainment industry.

As part of Landry's role today, she and her staff lead efforts to develop new approaches to volunteerism. Robyn loves this work as volunteers help "make our organization thrive," Landry said. This includes a program that "puts feet on the ground in rural communities," where death rates associated with high blood pressure are among the highest in the nation.

Other key volunteerism initiatives include the Gold Standard Board program, a new Emerging Leaders Council and a program to allow companies to engage their employees in volunteering for the American Heart Association.

"Over the years, I've loved the AHA's initiatives that bring science to life," Landry said. "We start with the science; we build on the science. Then we turn it into something that is literally helping patients and consumers."

Landry noted that in its 100-year history, the American Heart Association's impact on heart disease and stroke has been profound.

"We've been part of the biggest discoveries — funded by us, reported at our meetings and fed into our heart disease and stroke guidelines," she said. "We thread that science through everything we do, so it gets to the people who need it the most."