Academic Degrees
DBA, Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, expected 2021
MBA, Northeastern Illinois University, College of Business and Management, 2018
MS, Organizational Communication – Medill School of Journalism’s Integrated Marketing Communications Program, Northwestern University, 1988
BA, English, Northwestern University, 1985
Biography
Joan Shapiro Beigh is an instructor in the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship at the Driehaus College of Business.
Beigh has extensive experience in strategic and organizational communications, stakeholder research and corporate change management. For more than 20 years, Beigh has consulted mid-size to Fortune 500 corporate clients, including GE Capital, McDonald’s, AT&T, and Hyundai, and national nonprofit organizations. Her consulting focuses on evidence-based strategic communications and employee engagement. Earlier in her career, she developed and executed communications programs and vehicles for McDonald’s while working for Golin/Harris Communications, Inc., and later, Media Options, Inc. Beigh also taught management strategy classes to Turkish human resources managers in Istanbul as the associate director of Mideast operations for The Covey Leadership Center. Her career started with Shell Oil Company and Chrysler Corporation at manufacturing locations in the Midwest, where she executed employee communications and community relations initiatives.
Beigh’s current research projects explore adaptive cultural factors that mitigate change fatigue in organizations; work styles and efficacies that lead to outcomes of positive team experience, effectiveness and creativity; and the impact of a simply written, one page set of teamwork guidelines on student team effectiveness. Her most recent published research examined the creativity of passive and active procrastinators in consideration of the moderating roles of emotional stability and conscientiousness.
Prior to joining DePaul, Beigh taught classes in teamwork skills, presentations, and managerial and organizational communications at Northeastern Illinois University. She has achieved simple fluency in French and Italian. Beigh is the recipient of the Art Institute of Chicago Innovation in Teaching Award, given by DePaul's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Beigh received the award in recognition of pedagogical use of the Art Institute in her autumn 2021 class, MGT 302: Organizational Behavior.
Beigh lives on the north side of Chicago. She is married, with a son in college and daughter in Chicago Public Schools.