Student Scholar Spotlight: Maureen O’Boyle Feldman

: Tunisha Singleton

: Shayne Aquino

: Maureen O’Boyle Feldman

Showcasing the work of a student or recent graduate.

Tunisha Singleton
Tsingleton@email.fielding.edu

As Student Committee Co-Chairs, we initiated this Student Scholar Spotlight column to showcase the academic and professional highlights of a student or recent graduate. In our first column, we’re pleased and honored to feature the work of Maureen O’Boyle Feldman, a communications-relationship expert with experience in the entertainment, nonprofit, and marketing industries.

Leveraging new media and 21^st century technologies to support business initiatives, promote social causes, and creative marketing, Maureen is passionate about collaboration, strategic partnerships and cross generational mentoring. As a recent graduate from Touro University Worldwide, she aims to use her Masters in Media and Communications Psychology to increase the quality of life for seniors who feel left behind by tech advancements.

With a passion for helping others, Maureen currently serves as Director of Community Engagement for LIFT-Levantate, a nonprofit organization addressing health and wellness needs in underserved communities. She also contributes to this cause by teaching Healthy Aging courses at Los Angeles Pierce College in the Adult Education department.

At Lift-Levantate, Maureen has noticed a severe generational communication gap from her interactions with the high-school and college-aged interns. Her research suggests that the communication gap widens as new technologies continue to emerge. Miscommunication, mischaracterization, and mislabeling of the “other generations” are perpetuated as a result of varying communication styles.

She has addressed the need to bridge the generation gap through her video Teens and Technology: Growing up in the IGeneration. This videopoints out that rapid advances in technology have changed the way we communicate and work with each other, creating new challenges in communications among different generations. While Generation Y is highly adaptable, rapid technological advancement is creating a generation gap and the advice they receive from their parents, counselors, and teachers while well intentioned is obsolete. Generation Y is now entering a workforce with higher technological skills thantheir bosses and older coworkers. Maureen argues that the digital natives with their new skills, adaptability, and creativity will shape our future, but calls for better cross-generational collaboration.

http://youtu.be/4Uke4XGu9uw

In a second video, based on her Master’s thesis (2014) Intergenerational Communications in the Workforce, Maureen stresses the importance of cross-generational collaboration because the current workplace demographics span four generations with different skills, work ethic, and communication styles that often conflict with one another. Emerging technologies have contributed to the conflicting communication styles among the generations. Baby boomers make up 30% of the workforce, the millennial generation comprises 50% of all employed professionals, and by 2025, they will represent 75% of the workforce. Maureen emphasizes the need for our organizations’ leaders to develop this new talent for a better future. The following video presents issues inherent in working with a multigenerational workforce, a generational overview, and strategies to maximize cross-generational communication and knowledge-sharing within an organization.