Trudy Bayer is an educator, writer and political activist.  She holds graduate degrees in philosophy from the University of Louvain, Belgium and a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research has been published in various academic journals and her personal essays have appeared in a range of publications, including Newsweek, Ms. Magazine and the Friends Journal. In 2001 Trudy was appointed the founding director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Oral Communication Lab. She left Pitt in 2008 to join the communication faculty at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania where she developed a public speaking proficiency class. Trudy is a native of Southwestern Pennsylvania and currently resides in Pittsburgh — “The Paris of Appalachia.”