Terri Burke was the executive director of the ACLU of Texas for nearly 13 years. Prior to that she had a long career as a journalist, first as a reporter at Texas newspapers and later as a political and investigative reporter and eventually as a senior editor at The Hartford (Ct.) Courant. A native Texan, her career included stints as a senior editor at The Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman and Albuquerque Tribune before becoming editor in chief of the Abilene Reporter-News in Texas. An industry leader in recruiting news staffs that looked like the communities they served, Burke consulted with newspapers large and small about how to do likewise. Her tenure at the ACLU of Texas was marked by a dramatic increase in both budget and staff sizes, as well as recruiting and retaining one of the most diverse nonprofit staffs in the state. She continues to work in the nonprofit sector. 

She served as president of the boards of the Texas, and later New Mexico, Associated Press Managing Editors associations. She was an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a lecturer at the American Press Institute. She served as president of the board of the Nonprofit Management Center of West Texas and on the boards of the nonprofit Day Nursery of Abilene and Planned Parenthood of West Texas. Burke served on the Quality of Place Committee of the Greater Houston Partnership and she is a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. 

Burke is married to Michael Burke, a retired hotelier, and they are the parents of two daughters and one “practically perfect” granddaughter, Ella. They live in Houston, where Burke was born and reared, and not far from her mother who proudly cast her first vote for Adlai Stevenson.