More about our founder

Dr. LaShonda L. Eaddy, APR is a catalyst for community. Since 2020, she has been a co-convener of the Black PR Profs Unite support group that holds bi-monthly gatherings to provide support and create community among Black public relations professors and graduate students. Black PR Profs Unite has nearly 60 members representing junior and senior faculty, as well as college and university administrators hailing from a variety of institution types (i.e., Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Predominately White Institutions). Black PR Profs Unite session topics include, for example, maintaining physical, emotional, and mental wellness; promotion and tenure; and transitioning to administration to name a few. Dr. Eaddy’s Black PR Profs Unite involvement allows her to develop rich relationships with other black professors and provides opportunities to network with diverse students and scholars. 

As an extension of her work with Black PR Profs Unite and a desire to diversify the communications industry and classroom, Dr. Eaddy founded the Color My Prof network that provides ongoing support for domestically diverse scholars and graduate students and recruit domestically diverse candidates into communications doctoral programs. The inaugural Color My Prof Conference will be held Fall of 2024, in Atlanta, GA. The Color My Prof Conference is an all-expenses paid weekend that provides domestically diverse prospects a “crash course” into the academy while also providing diverse graduate students and faculty important professional development programs and opportunities to fellowship with one another.

Dr. Eaddy believes her purpose is to bridge gaps and help connect people from various walks of life to unify for a common goal. Her work inside and outside the classroom are a testament to this purpose. 

Dr. Eaddy is an assistant professor in the department of advertising and public relations at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. Her passion for public relations has taken her from corporate communication to the classroom. The self-proclaimed “practitioner scholar” understands the integral roles that public relations professionals and scholars play in the development, understanding and growth of the profession. She is accredited in public relations (APR) and has spent time primarily in the healthcare industry and was recognized in Dallas PRSA’s inaugural 40 Under 40 2021 honoree class. Most recently, Dr. Eaddy was selected as a 2024 PRO PR GLOBE Awards Laureate.

Dr. Eaddy’s passion for the public relations profession and research is evident in the classroom. She believes future public relations professionals are the key to bridging the gap between the industry and academe. Her goal is to use her professional experience to help students connect theory and practice and develop an appreciation for both. Dr. Eaddy’s courses help students develop critical-thinking skills that will be essential to their professional and personal success. 

Dr. Eaddy believes it is her duty to not only produce quality academic scholarship, but to repackage her research and identify ways to share it with communications professionals who can use it to enhance their communication strategy. She is accredited in public relations, demonstrating her public relations expertise, and maintains her professional networks as a Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and Page Up member, as they are invaluable to ensuring that practical applications and considerations remain at the forefront of her research agenda. 

Dr. Eaddy is a highly sought after speaker, giving keynote addresses and serving as panelist for several industry organizations such as UK-based Public Relations and Communications Association; PRSA; Page Up (an Arthur W. Page Society membership organization); and the Ethics Compliance Initiative TM. Her industry ties help her continue to forge relationships with key industry professionals. These connections also deepen students’ experiences through industry expert guest lectures by helping students cultivate relationships with industry leaders and providing experiential learning opportunities, as well as fostering curricular innovation based on industry insights.

Dr. Eaddy is a crisis history expert and investigates ways that crisis history can inform crisis communications scholarship and crisis communication strategy. Her goal is to conduct theoretically-grounded research that will help professionals develop more effective crisis communication and reputation management strategies and sound measures to inform and evaluate those strategies. Dr. Eaddy’s research examines the ways organizations have handled previous crises and how that affects publics’ perceptions and emotions during current crises. She is also interested in health and risk communication research that can help communicators create effective strategies to relay pertinent information to publics. Dr. Eaddy’s Crisis History Framework provides insight into crisis history salience by offering influential factors that impact stakeholders’ reliance on perceptions of organizations’ and their industry’s previous crises and how that affects their assessments of current crises. Dr. Eaddy also conducts historical research to explore parallels between historical crises and contemporary crises. Her research on the impacts of crisis history fills a literature gap that can be applied in various contexts ranging from corporate communications to risk communication to health disparities. 

Dr. Eaddy’s work has implications that will help scholars examine crisis history empirically; inform practitioners’ crisis communication strategies; and inform risk and health communications strategies. Her research also helps practitioners anticipate how their publics’ perceptions and emotions may be intensified by their level of crisis history salience. Dr. Eaddy will highlight this work as editor of the forthcoming edited volume, History’s Impact on Crisis Preparing and Preventing to be published by Routledge in August 2024.

Dr. Eaddy is a regular contributor in industry trade publications like PRNEWS and Crisis Insider, and popular press outlets, and she authored a Washington Post op-ed entitled, Perspective| Crises Can Turn into a Positive for Savvy Businesses, that shared the importance of crisis history considerations and learning for organizations’ future success and viability. These contributions serve a dual purpose of connecting with mainstream audiences outside of academe and providing students tangible evidence of the dynamic interaction between theory and practice. 

Dr. Eaddy has published in leading journals in the field, including Corporate Communication: An International Journal, Howard Journal of Communication, International Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Communication Management, and Public Relations Review. Her work has also been published in leading scholarly books such as The Handbook of Crisis Communication. As a practitioner scholar, Dr. Eaddy believes that giving back to the industry is critical, having served nearly eight years on the Orlando Regional PRSA Chapter executive board and continuing to serve PRSA in various capacities. Her commitment to the academy is evident through serving as: Journal of Public Relations Research editorial board member; Journal of Public Relations Education associate editor/web manager; vice head of AEJMC’s Public Relations division; secretary of AEJMC’s Commission on the Status of Minorities; chair of PRSA’s Educators Academy; and member of the Commission on Public Relations Education board.

Learn more about Dr. Eaddy’s scholarly work and teaching at www.lashondaeaddy.com.