Shelley Aylesworth‐Spink is the Associate Dean of the School of Business at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Canada. Her interests include the perception of pervasive global disease outbreaks in studying the interdisciplinary application of public relations, media studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies fields. She was formerly Principal Lecturer in Public Relations at the University of Westminster, England, and Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at the University of West London, England. Her areas of professional practice for organizations in the health, higher education, and manufacturing sectors include communications strategy, crisis communications, media relations, and corporate communications.

Tor Bang is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Culture at BI Norwegian Business School, located in Oslo. He serves as the Associate Dean for the school’s bachelor program in communication management and teaches classes in communication management to master’s students. Previously employed in Norway’s maritime sector, Bang holds a social science MA from the University of Oslo, with a thesis on freedom of expression in digital media. His PhD from the University of Bergen was a dissertation on communicative strategies in the Norwegian labor movement during the 1930s.

Brigitta R. Brunner is a Professor at the Auburn University School of Communication & Journalism. She has been on faculty at AU since 2002 teaching PR classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is editor of the Journal of Public Interest Communications. Her research interests include civic engagement, civic professionalism, diversity, and education. She has published two edited books, Creating Citizens: Liberal Arts and Community & Civic Engagement in the Land‐Grant Tradition (2016) and The Moral Compass of Public Relations (2017), and numerous refereed journal articles.

Yi‐Ru Regina Chen is Associate Professor of Public Relations at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research areas include strategic communication, social media engagement and gamification, government affairs, and corporate social responsibility and creating shared values in greater China. She has published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journal of Communication Management, and Information, Communication & Society. Chen is also the research fellow of the Behavioral Insights Research Center of the Institute for Public Relations (Gainesville, Florida).

Erica Ciszek is an Assistant Professor at the Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores the intersections of public relations, activism, and social change. Her work encompasses a triadic focus: (1) activism as public relations (conceptualizing social movement organizations as strategic communicators); (2) public relations as activism (conceptualizing public relations practitioners as organizational change agents); and (3) activism and strategic communication (considering how key stakeholders engage with communication materials aimed at them). Ciszek's research has been published in the top journals in the field, including the Journal of Communication, as well as advocacy journals such as the Journal of Homosexuality.

W. Timothy Coombs is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor in Liberal Arts in Department of Communication at Texas A&M University and an honorary professor in the Department of Business Communication at Aarhus University. His primary areas of research are crisis communication and corporate social responsibility. He is the current editor for Corporation Communication: An International Journal. His research has appeared in Management Communication Quarterly, Public Relations Review, Corporate Reputation Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, Journal of Communication Management, Business Horizons, and the Journal of Business Communication.

Karen Freberg is an Associate Professor in Strategic Communications at the University of Louisville. Her research areas are in social media, public relations, and crisis communications. Freberg is author of the SAGE textbook Social media for strategic communication: Creative strategies and research‐based applications.

Sherry J. Holladay is Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Her research interests include crisis communication, issues management, corporate social responsibility and irresponsibility, and activism. Her work has appeared in Public Relations Review, Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication Management, Journal of Public Relations Research, and International Journal of Strategic Communication. She is co‐editor of the Handbook of crisis communication and co‐author of It’s not just PR: Public relations in society, Public relations strategies and applications: Managing influence, and Managing corporate social responsibility.

Chun‐Ju Flora Hung‐Baesecke teaches at Massey University in Albany, New Zealand. For three years in a row (2015–2017), she was named an Arthur W. Page Legacy Scholar. She is the Vice Chair of the International Communication Association’s Public Relations Division and the Secretary General for Overseas Affairs, Public Relations Society of China. Hung‐Baesecke is on the advisory board of International Public Relations Research Conference and on the editorial boards of Journal of Public Relations Research and International Journal of Strategic Communication. Her research interests include organization–public relationships, corporate social responsibility, social media, employee communication, and stakeholder management.

Samsup Jo is a Professor in the Department of Public Relations & Advertising at the Sookmyung Women’s University in South Korea. He earned a PhD in mass communication from the University of Florida in 2003. He served as president of Korean Academic Society of Public Relations from November 2014 to November 2015. His research interests include public relations, specifically the public relations function in society, public relations ethics, and organization–public relationship measurement. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, and Journal of Communication Management.

Michael L. Kent is a Professor of Public Relations and Advertising at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia. Kent’s public relations research has focused on dialogue, new technology, public relations theory, social media, and engagement. His theory of dialogic public relations is currently one of the most influential frameworks in the field. Kent is a Fulbright Scholar (Riga Latvia, 2006), and has lectured and taught internationally for more than two decades.

Spiro Kiousis is Executive Associate Dean for the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida and is a Professor of Public Relations. His current research interests include political public relations, political communication, and digital communication. Specifically, this interdisciplinary research explores the interplay among political public relations efforts, news media content, and public opinion in traditional and interactive mass mediated contexts. Kiousis has had articles published in several leading journals, including Communication Research, Journal of Communication, the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Mass Communication & Society, Public Relations Review, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Public Relations Research, and several others.

Dean Kruckeberg, APR, Fellow of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), is a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is co‐author of the books Public relations and community: A reconstructed theory; This is PR; and Transparency, public relations, and the mass media. He has been presented with the National Communication Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions in Public Relations Education, the PRSA Atlas Award for Lifetime Achievement in International Public Relations, was PRSA national "Outstanding Educator," and was awarded the Jackson Jackson & Wagner Behavioral Research Prize and the Institute for Public Relations Pathfinder Award. He was co‐chair of the Commission on Public Relations Education for 15 years.

Alexander V. Laskin is a Professor of Strategic Communication at Quinnipiac University, USA. He is an author of over 50 publications, focused primarily on investor relations, international communications, emerging media technologies, and evaluation. He has two books published in 2018: Handbook of financial communication and investor relations and Social, mobile, and emerging media around the world: Communication case studies. Laskin is a chair of the Financial Communications section of the Public Relations Society of America. He is also a Fulbright Specialist, Page Legacy Scholar, and Plank Fellow.

Minqin Ma is a PhD student of communication studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interest focuses specifically on corporate social responsibility communication from the employees' perspective and its contribution to crisis communication and corporate reputation. She presented the paper "The moderating effect of response and sources on the relationship between sadness and reputation" in 2017 to the Annual Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. She is currently preparing her prospectus for confirming PhD candidature and working on a paper regarding the pro‐environmental behavior of Chinese individuals.

Juan‐Carlos Molleda is a tenured professor and the Edwin L. Artzt Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. He is also a US Fulbright Senior Specialist. In addition to his outreach to the professional community, Molleda is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Public Relations, a Latin American liaison of the Public Relations Society of America’s Certification in Education for Public Relations, and a member of The LAGRANT Foundation Board of Directors.

Dean Mundy is an Assistant Professor of Public Relations in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, where he researches issues related to diversity and inclusion, as well as LGBTQ advocacy. He explores how public relations best practices can be used to help champion the needs of individuals from underrepresented and marginalized groups – both within organizations and in society more broadly. He received his PhD, MA, and BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and spent approximately 10 years in the corporate world before entering academia.

Barbara Myslik is a PhD student at the University of Florida in the public relations department where she is working on her dissertation under the guidance of Dr. Spiro Kiousis. Her research interests include agenda‐building and agenda‐setting theories, political messages, populism, and transnational comparisons of political public relations outcomes. Apart from working on her research, she teaches public relations research and principles of PR. To stay current on industry trends, she consults on local political campaigns, working with candidates on their media strategy, speeches, media appearances, forum and debate preparation, and other campaign elements.

Cindy Sing‐Bik Ngai is an Assistant Professor and program leader for the MA in Bilingual Corporate Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include bilingual communication in the corporate context, leader communication, and new media communication. Ngai has published two research books, New trends in corporate communication: Language, strategies and practices (2012) and Role of language and corporate communication in Greater China: From academic to practitioner perspectives (2015). Her work has also appeared in international journals such as Public Relations Review, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, International Journal of Business Communication, and Discourse and Communication.

Geah Pressgrove is an Assistant Professor at the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University where she teaches introductory, skills, and advanced courses in strategic communications. Her published and in‐progress research examines the ways in which key communications variables influence relationship quality, behavioral outcomes, and loyalty. She explores the organization–public relationship paradigm primarily in the nonprofit, corporate social responsibility, community, and political contexts. She has more than 15 years of professional agency and freelance experience working with diverse clients, including nonprofits, foundations, corporations, entertainment properties, municipal governments, political campaigns, and healthcare organizations.

Ana María Suárez‐Monsalve is an Associate Professor at the University of Medellín, Colombia. She is a member of the communication studies research group GRECO (under Colciencias, a Colombian department for science, technology, and innovation); the Colombian Communication Research Association, ACICOM; the Latin American Communication Research Association, ALAIC; and the International Association for Media and Communication Research, IAMCR. She is also a member of the research team of the Latin American Communication Monitor, as well as such professional associations as the Public Relations Society of America and European Public Relations Education and Research Association. She has published more than 20 articles and chapters. Her work can be viewed in Public Relations Review, Comunicación, Revista Internacional de Relaciones Públicas, Organicom, Anagramas Rumbos y Sentidos de la Comunicación, and Alaic, among others. Her PhD is in Latin American Studies.

Elina Tachkova is a PhD student at the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. Her area of concentration is organizational communication, and crisis communication in particular. Tachkova’s research studies the effectiveness of different crisis response strategies on organizational reputation and stakeholder perceptions after a crisis. She is currently investigating the relationship between scandals and crises and the communicative implications it poses for both crisis communication research and practice. Additional research interests include further testing situational crisis communication theory (SCCT).

Maureen Taylor is a Professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Taylor's public relations research has focused on nation building and civil society, dialogue, engagement, and new technologies. In 2010, Taylor was honored by the Institute for Public Relations as a Pathfinder for an “original program of scholarly research that has made a significant contribution to the body of knowledge and practice of public relations.” Taylor is a member of the Arthur S. Page Society and serves as editor in chief of Public Relations Review. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow in the International Communication Association.

Chiara Valentini is a Professor of Corporate Communication at Jyväskylä University, School of Business and Economics, Finland. Her research interests focus on public relations, corporate communication, crisis communication, public affairs, and social media. Her work has appeared in numerous international peer‐reviewed journals, international handbooks, and volume contributions. She is the past chair of the Public Relations Division at the International Communication Association and serves as reviewer and editorial board member of several international journals.

Marina Vujnovic is an Associate Professor of Journalism in the Department of Communication at Monmouth University, New Jersey. A native of Croatia, Vujnovic came to United States in 2003 to pursue her graduate education in journalism and mass communication. She received her PhD at the University of Iowa in 2008. She is author of Forging the Bubikopf nation: Journalism, gender and modernity in interwar Yugoslavia, is co‐author of Participatory journalism: Guarding open gates at online newspapers, and co‐editor of Globalizing cultures: Theories, paradigms, actions. Vujnovic’s research interests focus on international communication and the global flow of information; journalism studies; and explorations of the historical, political‐economic, and cultural impact on media, class, gender, and ethnicity.

Richard D. Waters is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco where he teaches in the graduate business, public, and nonprofit administration programs. His research focuses on nonprofit communication, fundraising, and relationship management. He has published more than 75 peer‐reviewed journal articles on public relations topics, and he currently serves on nine editorial review boards. He has served in leadership positions in the Public Relations Society of America and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Ying Xiong is a PhD candidate in the School of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Tennessee. Her research explores how public relations contributes to society and facilitates social movement engagement in activism. Xiong has earned master’s degrees of arts from University of Oklahoma, USA, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China. Prior to returning to her PhD program, she worked in a public relations agency assisting Toyota’s national public relations campaigns.