Mardia Bishop holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, and a B.A. from Thomas More University. She is currently a Teaching Professor and the Director of Public Speaking Instruction for the Communication Department at the University of Illinois, where she teaches courses in storytelling, listening, and business and professional communication. She also supervises and trains graduate teaching assistants on pedagogy. She consistently is on the Faculty Ranked as Excellent List and has several awards for teaching excellence.

Bishop also serves as a communication consultant to organizations and in that capacity has developed and facilitated numerous interactive workshops that focus on Belonging, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Active Listening; Conflict Management; and Mindfulness Practices for Leaders. Her most recent consulting client includes the Pennsylvania Office of Commonwealth Libraries for whom she developed a six-week workshop series that helps participants identify and manage their implicit biases, use inclusive language and behaviors, listen through discomfort, and address microaggressions.

In 2021, Bishop and her colleagues were one of the ten winners of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s Health Make-A-Thon. In 2022, they were awarded a Jump ARCHES grant and Provost’s Call-to-Action grant. All awards funded an innovative virtual reality-based cultural competency training for medical students to reduce healthcare disparities. The prototypes for the training are currently being assessed with the assistance of Carle medical students, Carle and UIC medical residents, and Creighton medical students.

Bishop has presented at multiple conferences on addressing microaggressions, mediational communication, listening, using mindfulness practices in public speaking, and training and mentoring graduate teaching assistants.