Kendra Rivera is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, and research associate at CSPO for Lee Gutkind. Her scholarly work, which has resulted in numerous competitive conference papers and more than $35,000 in grant funding, focuses on organizational members' identities, and the discourses of power that create, sustain and constrain those identities. She is particularly interested in how organizationally preferred emotions are learned, communicated and resisted, and focuses on how broader discourses impact the possibilities that employees have for sustaining healthy identities. Rivera's work creates a bridge between academic research and the "real world" by utilizing alternative writing, such as creative nonfiction, to communicate her research to a broader audience. Prior to joining CSPO, she was a research associate for the Project for Wellness and Work-Life (PWWL), where she co-authored both an academic journal article as well as two white papers for practitioners. Rivera received her master's degree in communication from San Diego State University in 2006.