Celebrate exceptional listening leaders
Elizabeth Parks
Listening Hall of Fame
Elizabeth Parks earned a place in the ILA Listening Hall of Fame for more than 25 years of work that has expanded how the field itself understands listening — bringing communication studies, Deaf Studies, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, disability studies, and community engagement into one interdisciplinary approach. Her sociolinguistic research with Deaf communities in more than 20 countries and regions, paired with over 60 publications, has helped establish listening as a genuinely global, cross-cultural practice rather than a single-culture communication skill. She is completing a long tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Listening and recently relocated from the U.S. to South Korea to continue that international work. The Hall of Fame recognizes not one achievement but a career spent widening who and what the field of listening includes.
Margarete Imhof
Lifetime Achievement Award
A member of ILA for more than 30 years, Margarete Imhof is recognized for reshaping how the field understands listening — as an active, complex cognitive process rather than a passive skill. Her research in educational psychology and cognitive processes brought a distinctly international perspective to listening scholarship, broadening the field's reach outward from Germany. Beyond her scholarship, she has repeatedly stepped into ILA leadership when the organization needed it, including service as President and editorial leadership at the International Journal of Listening, building the infrastructure that has let the field keep growing. The award honors both the depth of her research and three decades of keeping ILA's institutional engine running.
Center for Courage & Renewal
Listener of the Year Award
The Center for Courage & Renewal is recognized for more than three decades of demonstrating that listening is not simply a communication technique but a transformative practice capable of strengthening individuals, organizations, and communities. Through a global network of facilitators, the Center has built training spaces for educators, healthcare professionals, nonprofit leaders, clergy, and civic organizations where deep, respectful listening fosters reflection and resilience. Thousands of facilitators and participants have carried those practices back into schools, hospitals, nonprofits, faith communities, and public institutions, creating an effect well beyond any single program. The award recognizes the scale and durability of that impact — an organization that has made listening practice portable across sectors.
Tabitha Lim
Carolyn Coakley-Hickerson Award
Tabitha Lim is recognized for demonstrating that educational leadership begins with listening — to students, teachers, families, and the wider school community. As Principal and Director of Curriculum and Instruction at TLS International School in Malaysia, she has built a model of school leadership centered on knowing and valuing students as whole individuals rather than managing them from a distance. Her own experience in an educational environment where student voice wasn't always prioritized shaped a career-long commitment to building something different. The award recognizes how directly she has translated listening theory into the daily practice of running a school.
Michael Humphrey
Outstanding Educator Award
Michael Humphrey is recognized for developing "Storylistening," a curriculum that fuses narrative identity with listening theory to help students see the connection between how they communicate and who they are. He extended that work into the Storylisteners Podcast, involving more than 40 graduate and undergraduate students in interviewing, editing, and analyzing listening skills as a hands-on method rather than an abstract lesson. His approach connects listening scholarship directly to journalism and media education, fields where the act of listening carries real professional stakes. Students credit his teaching with making them better communicators and better people, and he was previously named Best Teacher at Colorado State University.
Molly Stoltz
ILA Special Recognition Award
Molly Stoltz is recognized for nearly two decades of service to the listening field that happens largely behind the scenes. As co-editor of Listening Across Lives, she helped shape a major compilation of listening scholarship, and she has separately volunteered her own time helping authors meet the editorial requirements of the International Journal of Listening — sharpening their arguments while preserving their scholarly voice. That kind of work rarely carries its own byline, but it makes the published record of the field stronger and more accessible. The award recognizes service whose value shows up in other people's success rather than her own publication list.
Alexandra Perl
Listening in the Business Sector Award
Alexandra Perl is recognized for bringing listening into the practical, high-stakes work of organizational change — as founder of Impact Listening and as a facilitator and organizational development consultant with Balancing Business. She has also advanced ILA's own work directly, pioneering new programming as Member-at-Large for Special Projects, including a miniseries exploring AI and the future of listening. Her framing of listening as a leadership and change-management capability, rather than a soft skill, gives the field a concrete foothold in the business world. The award recognizes both that professional translation of listening theory and her direct contributions to ILA's programming.
Brandon Shanks
Graduate Dissertation or Thesis Award
Brandon Shanks is recognized for a Colorado State University master's thesis mapping the history, philosophy, and practice of international listening theory scholarship from 1987 to 2021. By gathering and analyzing data on the field's foundational figures, the work fills a real gap in listening studies' academic lineage — groundwork that later scholarship depends on without always acknowledging. Its impact didn't stop at the thesis defense: Shanks will serve as Guest Editor for the Fall 2026 special issue of the International Journal of Listening, extending his research into the field's own editorial record. The award recognizes rigorous historical scholarship that is already shaping how the discipline understands its own development.
Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa
Listening Research Award
Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa is recognized for her 2026 article in the International Journal of Listening introducing the Theory of Ethically Resonant Listening (TERL), which reframes listening as an ethically consequential act rather than a passive communication skill. One nominator described the theory as moving listening toward "a structural, politically consequential act" with real implications for relationships, organizations, and social justice. Her research centers on courtroom communication, where she and collaborator Tuula-Riitta Välikoski are helping shape how a judicial system understands listening in practice. She also co-authored Finland's first research-based listening textbook and will begin a term as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Listening on January 1, 2027.
Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa
Synergist Award
Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa's second 2026 award recognizes a different dimension of her scholarship: its collaborative, boundary-crossing character. Her co-authored work theorizing authentic listening as relational praxis brings together international scholars from different disciplines and cultures to build integrative frameworks for the field. By bridging organizational communication, media studies, communication ethics, and intercultural scholarship, she has created connections that extend listening research's reach well beyond any one specialty. The Synergist Award specifically honors that kind of theory-building through partnership — recognizing that some of the field's most significant advances come from bringing people together, not from publishing alone.
Luís Miguel Loureiro
IJL Article of the Year Award
As the inaugural recipient of this award, Luís Miguel Loureiro is recognized for "Toward an Understanding of Listening as Ethics," an article that draws on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory to argue that listening can function as an ethical act rather than merely a technique for receiving information. The work grew out of his nearly three decades as a television and radio journalist, including work as a war correspondent, and asks a pointed question: what happens when journalists — and by extension, anyone navigating an accelerated media environment — stop listening? ILA's editorial leadership selected it from the journal's 2025 volume as an especially innovative contribution to the field. The award also marks the start of a new research direction connecting listening theory to journalism, propaganda studies, and peace journalism.
Beata Kaczkowska
President's Award of Appreciation
Beata Kaczkowska is recognized for her exceptional service, dedication, and contributions to the Association. Through her tireless efforts and steadfast support of the Executive Board, ILA achieved significant accomplishments that modernized the organization, strengthened its systems, and advanced the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. She consistently demonstrated an exceptional understanding of the technological, administrative, and leadership needs of a nonprofit organization. She managed and improved organizational systems, processes, and operations, bringing initiative, expertise, and excellence to every responsibility. Her work helped improve the way ILA functions and serves its members while positioning the organization for a stronger, more organized, and more sustainable future.
Michael Gingerich
President's Award of Appreciation
Michael Gingerich is recognized for taking on what looked like an impossible assignment — revising and restructuring ILA's financial operations — and carrying it through with professionalism, patience, and integrity. His expertise brought clarity and renewed confidence to an area essential to the Association's long-term health, strengthening the financial foundation that supports responsible governance and future growth. The award also recognizes his service beyond the Secretary and Financial Manager role: Gingerich co-founded Someone To Tell It To, a nonprofit built around compassionate listening that has engaged in more than 25,000 listening interactions since 2012. He will continue serving ILA as an incoming Co-First Vice President.
Lori Joubert
President's Award of Appreciation
Lori Joubert is recognized for the counsel and steady support she provided as a trusted advisor throughout this presidential administration. As a former ILA president herself, she understood both the formal responsibilities of leading the organization and the less visible personal demands that come with it, and she made herself consistently available for guidance. Her leadership in restorative justice, reconciliation, and kindness helped shape the spirit and direction of the administration during this term. The award recognizes a kind of contribution that rarely gets credited on its own: the advisor whose wisdom shapes decisions without appearing in the record of them.