Passionate about transforming business through effective communication, Dr. Amanda G. McKendree serves as an Associate Teaching Professor of Management in the Department of Management & Organization at the University of Notre Dame where she teaches courses in business communication, strategic communication, and crisis communication. She also holds the Arthur F. and Mary J. O’Neil Directorship at the Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication in the Mendoza College of Business. Professor McKendree's research examines crisis communication, conflict communication, and the influence of rhetoric on organizational identity. She is published in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Identity, Business Communication Quarterly, Teaching Ideas for the Basic Communication Course, Journal of the Association for Communication Administration, and Review of Communication. She is a coauthor of Conflict Between Persons: The Origins of Leadership. A connector and convener at heart, she currently serves as the President of the Eastern Communication Association and is a Past President of the Pennsylvania Communication Association. She is also a member of the Management Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Arthur W. Page Society. She is the recipient of the 2018 Carroll Arnold Distinguished Service Award from the Pennsylvania Communication Association, the 2019 Faculty Service Award for the Department of Management & Organization, Mendoza College of Business, and the 2021 Cornerstone Award for Business, given by her alma mater, Chatham University. After graduating from Chatham University with her BA in Global Policy Studies, she received an MPA in Nonprofit/Public Management from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. She was awarded a one-year fellowship in public affairs at the Coro Center for Civic Leadership and Carnegie Mellon University, and earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric at Duquesne University. Outside of academia, she applies her communication expertise to her role as founder of Strikeout PSP, a Southwestern Pennsylvania fundraising initiative focused on raising awareness and research funds for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a degenerative brain disease with no known causes, treatments, or cure. This work reminds her every day that we have a responsibility to those who have lost the ability to communicate and to continue to work in honor of those who are no longer with us.