Before starting a communications firm specializing in healthcare, Lance Lunsford worked in several community market newspapers as a reporter and editor.

Covering beats from law enforcement and courts to business, politics, and government, Lunsford spent days talking to experts while cultivating relationships with insights on how institutions work, perform at their heights, and falter. It was early on in his career as a reporter covering police and courts where he engaged firefighters who spent years exploring what resulted in the tragic death of the firefighter-paramedic largely credited for extracted an 18-month-old girl from an abandoned water well in a residential backyard in Midland, Texas.

Lunsford originally released a version of the book under a small publisher in 2006.

• Titled The Rainbow’s Shadow: The True Stories of the Baby Jessica Rescue and the Tragedies that Followed, Lunsford worked during the day as a news reporter for a daily news publication and researched and wrote at night.
• The new version includes new interviews, updates on those involved in the rescue, analysis of the role of the oil economy, and the emergence of CNN’s disruptive finance and product model.

Lance Lunsford serves as senior partner at Groundswell Health, a company he co-founded in Austin, Texas, focusing on strategic communication and marketing programs for health care organizations. He is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and serves on the board of the Central Texas chapter. Previously, he served as senior vice president of strategic communications for the Texas Hospital Association, overseeing all strategic messaging related to legislative and regulatory affairs, including issues relating to health care delivery and finance. He also served as the CEO and president of THA’s for-profit subsidiary, HealthShare.

Prior to joining THA, Lunsford worked as director of marketing for UMC Health System, a 400–bed hospital located in Lubbock, Texas, where he built patient volume strategies for a variety of service lines.

Lunsford started his career in journalism as a reporter before becoming city editor of a major West Texas daily newspaper at 24. Lunsford was the first to produce and implement digital content features at multiple newspapers between 2003 and 2007.

He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Michelle. Together, they have three daughters.