Title:

Professor

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Country:

United States

Community Role:

Industries:

Higher Education

Don Waisanen is a Professor in the Baruch College, CUNY Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, where he teaches courses and workshops in public communication—including executive speech training, communication strategy, and seminars on storytelling, conflict and negotiation, and leadership and improvisation. All his research projects seek to understand how communication works to promote or hinder the force of citizens’ voices. He is the author of the new book, Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs, and co-author and author of Immigration and Strategic Public Health Communication: Lessons from the Transnational Seguro Popular Project, Real Money, Real Power? The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City, and Political Conversion: Personal Transformation as Strategic Public Communication. He’s currently working on a project providing a new framework for training professionals in leadership communication, and another on how to address the onslaught of newly developed voter suppression policies across the U.S. Previously, Don worked in broadcast journalism, as a speechwriter, and on political campaigns. He is the founder of Communication Upward, an adjunct lecturer at New York University and Columbia University, and received a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. He has been an improvisational performer at theaters in Los Angeles and New York for nearly two decades.

Areas of Interest:

Communication, Leadership, Civic Engagement