Anita Verna Crofts is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication with interests in personal narrative, auditory storytelling, and the ethnography of food. As Associate Director of the Communication Leadership program, her courses address personal narrative, leadership and creativity in the digital age, and listening as a leadership tool.

She maintains a Clinical Instructor position at the UW Department of Global Health and has collaborated with partner institutions in Sudan, Namibia, and India on leadership and management trainings with her contributions targeted at the concept of digital storytelling as a leadership and evidence tool.

Her writings on the intersection of food and culture explore the preservation of food traditions in post-conflict societies as a means of sustaining community identity and have appeared in Saveur and Gastronomica. Her collections of essays, Meet Me at the Bamboo Table: Everyday Meals Everywhere, was published by Chin Music Press in 2016. She curates then gastro-blog Sneeze! on her website www.avcrofts.com.

Anita is a German Marshall Memorial Fellow and Thomas J. Watson Research Fellow. She has an MPA from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy & Governance and serves as a book judge for The James Beard Foundation.

She bakes a mean pie.