Faculty: Business Communication

Jolanta Aritz specializes in intercultural business communication, small-group decision-making, leadership communication and virtual teams. Professor Aritz is co-author of the book Leadership Talk: A Discourse Approach to Leader Emergence and co-editor of the Discourse Perspectives on Organizational Communication book. She serves as Vice-president for the Western region of the Association of Business Communication. Prof. Aritz is a former Fulbright scholar and recipient of multiple awards, including the Distinguished Publication on Business Communication, the USC Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching, and the Mellon mentoring award.

Pete Cardon teaches a variety of business communication courses. He researches team communication, role of technology in leadership communication, and intercultural business communication. Professor Cardon previously served as President of the Association of Business Communication. Pete previously taught at the University of South Carolina for six years and Utah State University for three years. Before working in higher education, he held several marketing and management positions in the tourism and manufacturing industries. He is the author of Business Communication: Developing Leaders for a Networked World and co-author of Business and Professional Communication: Putting People First.

Lee is an expert in rhetoric who has taught both of our main undergraduate courses, BUAD 302 and WRIT 340, and has coordinated our series of communication classes for doctoral students. Lee’s classes are noted for revolving around books and other readings on current issues that change year-to-year, such as the industrial food system, the water crisis in the United States, the financial crisis, and most recently the debt ceiling crisis. Lee has also become one of Marshall’s leaders in ethics instruction. He developed and for several years taught ethics seminars in various accounting courses, and worked on the revision of Marshall’s Ethics and Professional Communication undergraduate elective. Lee has made numerous service contributions over the years, including serving as a faculty advisor in various student case competitions.

Maria Colman is the owner and founder of handmadeMaria®. The original business plan was part of her MBA at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business. Maria has over 30 years' experience in retail marketing, accounting management, direct sales, and education. Her upcycled products and art pieces are sold at brick and mortar and online stores.

Courses taught include; BUAD 302, BUAD 302T, WRIT 340, GSBA 542, and GSBA 523T—core courses for undergraduate and graduate students.

Her commitment to her students surpasses teaching—she also coaches undergraduate student teams for case competitions as an advisor for the Marshall Case Team and accompanies them to competitions.

Dr. Cynthia Alt has over 25 years of experience consulting in the areas of organizational and leadership development. Her expertise resides in her ability to align individual and organizational goals in order to maximize productivity and obtain desired results.  Dr. Alt's approach focuses on partnering with clients as they work together to achieve goals.  She has extensive experience helping clients improve communication on a personal and organizational perspective.  Past research focused on encouraging team creativity, profit sharing in organizations, and identifying factors leading to employee engagement and performance.  Dr. Alt has been teaching for the CMC since 2014.

Cesar Armendariz specializes in strategic communication, leadership and team-building. He has a diverse professional background, having served in the private, public and non-profit sectors, both here in the U.S. and in Mexico. Cesar is currently the Community Integration Executive at Adventist Health White Memorial in Los Angeles, where he oversees the Population Health strategies of the hospital, serves as the public information officer, and fosters strategic collaborations with key community stakeholders and partners. He is bilingual (Spanish), bicultural (Latin American protocol), and enjoys traveling and spending his free time with his two collegiate children, Zaira and Aramis.

Having started as a newspaper journalist, Holly has forged a career as a writer, editor, and speechwriter. In charge of presidential communications at USC for 12 years, she also oversaw dozens of video productions. She established and led USC’s first unit dedicated to new media and visual communications and taught a USC Freshman Seminar on public speaking.Holly also founded and leads an award-winning nonprofit, Picture Alternatives, which uses creative media to educate about and advocate for alternatives to violence in both interpersonal and political arenas. She holds a master’s in professional writing from USC and an M.A. in theology.

Doug Andrews specializes in accounting-environment communication issues, writes about those issues in accounting journals, and helps corporate clients (IBM, KPMG, PwC, Exxon, Deloitte, Chevron, GE, Mars, SEIU) and smaller firms. His teaching, research, and consulting sensibilities are tempered by a range of experiences: two and a half years as Associate Dean of Marshall's undergraduate business program, 17 years as department chair, 30+ years of classroom teaching, four Vietnam-era years in Special Forces, four years as a truck driver and bowler, three summers on a Midwestern crop harvesting team, eight years as a sales specialist for a publisher, and a PhD from Northwestern.

Sandra Chrystal serves as Vice Dean for online learning and oversees Marshall's Centers of Excellence. She previously served as Director of the Center for Management Communication. She teaches management communication classes focused on technology-enhanced and community-based learning. She has received USC's Teaching with Technology and Teaching Has No Boundaries awards, and the Marshall School's Evan C. Thompson Teaching and Learning Innovation award and MSB's Dean's Award for Community. Before joining USC, she taught at Clayton State University, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame, worked in corporate marketing, and owned her own business.

Paul Frommer, the linguist who developed the Na'vi language for James Cameron's film Avatar, is a former director of the Center for Management Communication. His teaching at USC included Advanced Writing for Business and an undergrad elective he co-created, "Cross-cultural Business Communication for Non-native Speakers." Prior to joining Marshall, he lived and taught in Malaysia and Iran, and spent ten years in the business world. Since Avatar, Professor Frommer has been working with a worldwide community of Na'vi enthusiasts dedicated to expanding the use of the language. He also developed Barsoomian, the Martian language for the Disney film John Carter.