Dr. Karen Joyce G. Cayamanda is an Associate Professor in Communication from the University of the Philippines Mindanao, with a 24-year teaching experience handling courses in the Communication and Media Arts program, technical and business writing, rhetorics and General Education courses. She also has a 16-year experience as faculty administrator in different positions: 5 years as College Secretary; 8 years as University Registrar; 2 years as Humanities Department Chair and 2.5 years as Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs. She currently serves as the Vice-Chancellor for Administration in UP Mindanao.

She is a graduate of UPLB (BA Comm Arts, 1993; MA Comm Arts, 2000 and PhD Development Studies, 2019). Her study titled “Risk Communication Management for flood vulnerable communities of Davao City, Southern Philippines, with a Best Dissertation award has been presented as paper outputs in various international conferences and have been awarded Best Paper presentation in three international conferences.

She was a grantee of the PhD graduate studies scholarship under the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and a PhD research scholarship recipient under the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and a PhD fellow of the Doctoral Studies Program of the University of the Philippines. She is also a recipient of the UP Faculty Grant for 2019-2021.

Her research interests are : (1) Risk Communication and Disaster Management towards strategic planning, public policy analysis and urban/rural development studies; and, (2) Organizational Communication and Leadership.

She is a member of the Society for Research Development (SRD), Philippine Association of Media Educators (PACE), Philippines Communication Society (PCS), Philippine Academic Society for Climate and Disaster Resilience (PASCDR) and Local Fellow and Director for Conferences and Events of the Institute of Industry and Academic Research Incorporated (IIARI).