Dr. Jessica Rick

Research Interests & Areas

Dr. Rick’s research examines how organizational policies are communicated, interpreted, and enacted in everyday life, with particular attention to the stigma and inequities that shape who can access and use these policies without penalty. Her work is grounded in organizational and health communication and explores how systems of power—including gender, social class, and normative expectations of work and family—structure people’s professional and personal experiences.

Her recent scholarship focuses on maternal health and labor, with a specific emphasis on exclusively pumping as an underexamined and often invisible form of care work. Through qualitative and visual methodologies, she investigates how exclusively pumping mothers navigate workplace policies, spatial constraints, social expectations, and interactions with healthcare providers, family members, and broader support networks. This work highlights how lactating bodies are regulated, stigmatized, and made (in)visible across organizational and interpersonal contexts.

Dr. Rick’s work has been published in several respected communication journals and books, including Communication Studies, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Family Communication, Women's Reproductive Health, Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, and Journal of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. She has also led trainings for local and national organizations on topics such as microaggressions, diversity and inclusion, effective communication, staying true to one's mission, balancing work and life, and public speaking. She’s a trained mentor through the Lean In Circles program, which supports women in leadership and professional growth.