Maegan Stephens

Maegan Stephens grew up as a competitive public speaker, joining the speech team at Ball State University, where she earned both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Communication Studies. She began teaching communication courses at 21 and coached the Ball State speech team before moving to The University of Texas at Austin. At UT, she earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the Moody College of Communication, with research focused on listening behavior in workplace settings. During her doctoral work, she served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, studying civic engagement and political communication.

Before joining Duarte, Maegan built a career at the intersection of research and practice. She served as Director of Executive Communication at Quantified Communications in Austin, where she spent two and a half years analyzing data from over 100,000 presentations to coach Fortune 100 executives, TED speakers, startup founders, and business school programs. Her work at Quantified Communications was featured in ABC News. She has also been an independent communication consultant and MBA Communication Coach at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin since 2012, a role she continues today.