People Group Archives: Local Communities of Practice

Roy Reid is a leading authority on public relations, business communications, and marketing with extensive experience in healthcare. He works with business leaders as a counselor, strategist, and coach to grow, maintain, and protect their interests. He is the Executive Director of Communications for AdventHealth Florida Division. Formerly, he was at the University of Central […]

Isaret Jeffers founded Colectivo ÁRBOL—a nonprofit organization to help provide food, clothes, and other services for field workers throughout Florida—in 2017. Jeffers is daughter of a field-worker.  Her mother worked on Texas farms when she was 8.  Her grandmother was the first to serve the field-worker community, cooking and feeding them for fee.  Jeffers retired […]

Chris Castro is an award-winning sustainability professional, clean energy enthusiast, and eco-entrepreneur with a passion to advance smart, resilient, and sustainable cities in balance with nature. Since 2014, Chris has worked at the City of Orlando as the Senior Advisor to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, Director of Sustainability & Resilience, and ‘Future-Ready’ steering committee member, […]

Yue ‘Gurt’ Ge (Ph.D., 2013, Texas A&M University) is Assistant Professor of Emergency Management and Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Public Administration and  Faculty Co-lead of the Urban Resilience Initiative at the University of Central Florida. Gurt studies community resilience through public-private partnerships from an interdisciplinary and community-engaged perspective. He has been […]

Mayor Buddy Dyer has worked tirelessly to shape Orlando into a vibrant, future-ready community where unity and partnership are the keys to helping every city resident thrive. Since his first day in office, Mayor Dyer has increased collaboration between Central Florida’s many governments, its business and civic communities and residents. Under his leadership, Mayor Dyer […]

Ronald C. Arnett (Ph.D., Ohio University, 1978) is chair and professor of the Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, the Patricia Doherty Yoder and Ronald Wolfe Endowed Chair in Communication Ethics, and the Henry Koren, C.S.Sp., Endowed Chair for Scholarly Excellence (2010–2015) at Duquesne University. He has co-edited seven books and authored/coauthored twelve books, most […]

Timothy L. Sellnow is a Luminary Research Professor of Strategic Communication and Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Research and Creative Activity in the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Sellnow’s research focuses on bioterrorism, pre-crisis planning, and strategic communication for risk management and mitigation in organizational and health settings. […]