The Ethel Walker School
Marketing and Communications
Masha Vdovenko
Digital Communications Associate
Masha Vdovenko joined Walker’s in 2025, bringing a passion for storytelling, creativity, and design to the school community. A 2024 graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in Digital Media and Design, Masha uses art as a platform for meaningful conversation. Her senior animation project earned the department award for Best Social Commentary, and another of her works received a Silver award at the Annual CADC Awards.
While in college, Masha gained hands-on experience working as a Graphic Design Assistant at the UConn Visitor Center, creating visual content to connect with prospective students and families. She also worked with UConn’s Digital Media and Design Department to promote their programs, manage social media campaigns, and animate their new application video—a project that inspired her to apply her creative skills in educational spaces.
Growing up right in Simsbury, just around the corner from Walker’s, Masha is excited to bring her skills back home to a community she has always admired. At Walker’s, she manages social media, the website, photography, videography, and graphic design.
Christine Sanni
Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Liaison
Christine Sanni is an accomplished communications professional with extensive experience advising leaders, growing effective teams, and developing, executing, and measuring the impact of strategic communications and marketing plans for top universities and nonprofits. Throughout her career, she has prepared university and nonprofit leaders and luminaries alike to engage effectively with the press, donors and prospective donors, alumni, and members of the public.
Early in her career she worked in publishing and successfully booked authors on national media tours. Her placements included the Wall St. Journal, People Magazine, Good Morning America, and National Public Radio (NPR). She leveraged this work to move into higher education and partnered with scholars and practitioners at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she mounted a successful partnership with NPR to broadcast “Talk of the Nation” live from campus.
During her tenure at Tufts University, she created, implemented, and completed the university’s first integrated communications and marketing plan to advance the business objectives of the university. This included developing a marketing plan for Tufts’ successful $1.5 billion campaign, as well as enlisting the support of deans for the centralization of recruitment marketing for all graduate programs.
Sanni has held leadership positions at Carthage College, Newman’s Own Foundation, and Trinity College. The client list for her company, Christine Sanni Communications, includes Harvard University, MIT, Beth Israel Lahey Health, Chicago Theological Seminary, Lee Memorial Health Systems, and Northeastern University.
Sanni holds a B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Tufts University and a M.A. in English Literature from the University of New Hampshire. She has taught English and Composition at the college level.
Liss Couch-Edwards '07
Associate Director of Marketing and Communications
Liss graduated from Walker’s in 2007, and after earning her B.A. in Art History and Film Studies from Mount Holyoke College, she joined Walker’s Visual and Performing Arts faculty. She holds an MFA in Illustration from The University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School. Liss later worked as the graphic designer at Hartford Stage, a Tony Award-winning theatre company, and has been a freelance graphic designer for schools, non-profits, and small businesses in New England. She returned to Walker’s in 2022 as a member of the Marketing and Communications department, now holding the role of Associate Director of Marketing and Communications. Liss lives on campus with her husband, John Monagan, Walker’s history faculty, and their two children.
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