Kathleen Kelley Reardon is Professor Emerita of Management at University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

She earned her Ph.D. summa cum laude and with distinction at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst after receiving her BA degree with honors from University of Connecticut at Storrs. Kathleen is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi and Mortar Board.

Her primary areas of scholarly interest have been leadership communication, persuasion, politics in the workplace, negotiation and interpersonal communication. Public Opinion Quarterly described her first book, Persuasion in Practice, as a landmark contribution to the field.

Kathleen has taught negotiation, leadership and politics in the MBA, Executive MBA, and International MBA. For 15 years, she served on the USC Preventive Medicine faculty, developing interventions aimed at changing health habits among high-risk populations. She also served as associate director with Warren Bennis of the USC Leadership Institute.

She has authored 10 books and numerous articles, including three for The Harvard Business Review. Her 2001 book The Secret Handshake: Mastering the Politics of the Business Inner Circle (Currency, Doubleday) became an Amazon.com nonfiction and business best seller. It was followed by The Skilled Negotiator (Jossey-Bass, 2004), It’s All Politics: Winning in a World Where Hard Work and Talent Aren’t Enough (Currency, Doubleday, 2005), and Comebacks at Work: Using Conversation to Master Confrontation (Harper Business, 2010), which have also been Amazon bestsellers.

Her first novel, Shadow Campus, is a crime mystery and an inside look at the sometimes vicious politics of academia. Forbes described it as a "fast-paced" and “masterful debut.” Her second novel, Damned if She Does, will be published in the fall on 2019 by Big Table Publishing. Kathleen's nonfiction work on gender issues, sexual harassment and assault is the backdrop for her latest novel.

Kathleen was awarded the 2013 Humanitarian Award by the University of Connecticut Alumni Association based on her contributions to underserved groups, especially in originating and working to develop college prep academies for foster teens (www.firststar.org).

Kathleen was a signature blogger at Huffington Post (2005 to
2017) and also has blogged at Big Think and The Conversation (Guardian) and at her website (www.kathleenkelleyreardon.com). She is a watercolor and oil artist. Her work can be seen on her kathleenkelleyreardon Facebook page, the Mizen Artists website and www.painting doc.com.