Frances Laskey

Biography

Frances Laskey currently teaches GenBus 360, the undergraduate workplace communications course, as well as working with the MBA and Master’s students on communication skills.

Ms. Laskey came to the WSB after more than 25 years of working in the private sector. She worked for 20 years at Berkeley Policy Associates (Oakland, CA), first as office manager, eventually as director of human resources, IT manager, and internal editor, and served on BPA’s Board of Directors and as a trustee of BPA’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)/401K. Prior to that, Ms. Laskey worked for a husband-and-wife power electronics consulting firm (E/J Bloom Assoc.) and a Japanese international trading company (Mitsui Bussan Kaisha). She served as president of the California Employer Advisory Council (and president of the East Bay Employer Advisory Council, a local chapter of the CEAC), an organization that provides training and networking to HR professionals, as well as linking employers to the California Employment Development Department. She also served as secretary of Small Business California, a small business advocacy group. Ms. Laskey has given presentations locally and nationally on HR management and, for the ESOP Association, HR management in the context of employee ownership. She has also worked as a freelance editor since 2007.

Her current position, teaching workplace communication, brings together her private sector management, writing, and presentation skills and experience, as well as her academic teaching experience. In GenBus 360, she emphasizes the importance of collegiality to success in the workplace, and the centrality of good communication to the development of effective working relationships. This includes training students in effective listening, writing, and presenting strategies that focus on best practices in their prospective fields.

Ms. Laskey received her BA in French from UC Berkeley (1983), MAs in English from Mills College (2010) and UW-Madison (2012), and completed PhD coursework in Literary Studies at UW-Madison in 2014. Her first academic teaching experience was as a teaching assistant at Mills; she has since taught courses in literary studies and composition at both Mills and UW-Madison.