Heather Crandall

Heather Crandall Ph. D. is an Associate Professor in the Master’s Program in Communication and Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University where she teaches courses in women in leadership, theorizing communication, small group communication, interpersonal communication, rhetoric, organizational communication, and media literacy. In many of these courses, effective listening skills are of the utmost importance. At the interpersonal level, effective listening matters to the quality of conversations. At the organizational level, effective listening matters to the quality of decisions and to successfully managing conflict. At the level of mass media, unheard voice is a major problem. And for women in leadership, how can society thrive if non-conscious bias keeps us from being heard, and by extension, sharing influence?

Dr. Crandall earned her interdisciplinary Ph.D. in American Studies, Communication, and Rhetoric from Washington State University. Her research interests include visual rhetoric and social change, media literacy, and communication pedagogy. She is a member of the National Communication Association, the International Leadership Association, Western States Communication Association where she serves on the Executive Council, and the Northwest Communication Association where she just finished as editor of the Northwest Journal of Communication. She is on the Board of the Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media.

She is currently working collaboratively on the 6^th volume in the Women and Leadership Book Series called, Gender, Communication, and the Leadership Gap. The volume, published by the International Leadership Association, highlights the connections between the fields of communication and leadership to help address the under-representation of women in leadership. Because women in leadership positions occupy a contested landscape, one goal of the collection is to clarify the contradictory communication dynamics at play that cut across interpersonal and organizational contexts.