Carolyn Boiarsky, Ph.D., has both theoretical knowledge and practical experience as a consultant in crisis communication. She is a former reporter, professor of English and the author of 3 books on written communication related to crisis situations. Her first book, a textbook on technical communication, was based on her experiences as a consultant with the nuclear power industry for Effective Communication Associates, which she founded with Leah Kolt, her business partner. She and Kolt provided professional development workshops to the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the watchdog for the industry, as well as some of the nuclear power plants, including those operated by the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and Florida Power. She has also provided help in communication to various diverse corporations, including State Farm and Caterpillar. Her discussions with the engineers and managers at those plants as well as her analysis of their written documents have formed the basis of her instruction in effective communication.
As a Statehouse reporter for United Press International (UPI) in West Virginia where she began her career, she became familiar with the problems of the coal industry. Later, in Peoria, IL, she covered Illinois politics and Caterpillar Inc. She has taught at Georgia Institute of Technology and is now a professor in the English Department at Purdue University Northwest-Calumet Campus. She received her Ph.D. from Georgia State University.
Boiarsky has been investigating how written communication has been one of the root causes of some of the major crisis situations in the past 50 years. Using the skills she honed as a reporter and the knowledge of rhetoric that she acquired during her doctoral studies, she has sifted through the original emails, letters, and texts of such disasters as the Challenger and Columbia Shuttle accidents and the BP/Horizon oil rig explosion to study the written communication and miscommunication between engineers and manager involved in the various situations. Recently she has studied the communication problems between governments, communities and local citizens related to contamination problems, including those in Newark, NJ, and East Chicago, IN. She continues to comb the media for announcements of new disasters in crisis situations that have either erupted or been averted.