The best part of teaching communication? I never have to convince anyone it might be useful someday.
While I firmly believe in the value of algebra and history, the benefit of learning communication isn’t hard to sell. Just like you, I’ve been doing it since birth. Maybe unlike you, I’ve been fascinated by it almost as long. At a young age, I started noticing patterns — what worked, what didn’t, and why certain messages seemed to land while others fell flat.
There was a phase where I was completely obsessed with Evita. Yes, I love an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but what captivated me wasn’t the music — it was watching Eva Perón command a crowd. The intention behind every word. The way an audience could shift in real time. It was impossible to ignore the power of communication. That question — why does this work? — never really left me.
It surprised no one that I studied communication in college. I flirted with broadcasting and PR, but ultimately fell in love with theory — the frameworks that explain how perception, attribution, and language shape the way we interpret each other. I began teaching in graduate school and never stopped.
In the classroom, I watched students examine their self-concept for the first time and experiment with new interpretations of conflict. Over and over, I witnessed what happens when people realize they have more control over how they communicate than they thought.
When my own kids got older (and slightly more independent), I felt ready for a new stretch. I moved into corporate learning and quickly discovered something reassuring: people are just people. The vocabulary changed, the stakes were higher, but the patterns were the same.
Almost everyone wants to be a better communicator. Very little of what we do, however, is intentional. Most communication is accidental at best — reactive and misaligned at worst.
During my corporate years, I designed and facilitated trainings across a wide range of so-called “soft skills,” and communication was woven through every one of them. I also built a leadership development program from the ground up, which gave me a front-row seat to the pressures leaders face. Without exception, the leaders I worked with wanted to do well. No one aimed to communicate poorly. No one wanted to be misunderstood. They wanted clarity. They wanted alignment.
The combination of academic theory and real-world application isn’t just useful — it’s powerful. It allows me to see patterns quickly, name what’s happening in a room, and help people expand perspective in ways that actually change how they work.