Vy Luong wins AEJMC Inez Kaiser Award
Vy Luong, Ph.D. ’26, is a recipient of the 2026 Inez Kaiser Graduate Student of Color Award, bestowed by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
The prestigious award honors strategic communication students enrolled or finishing degrees in a graduate program. Its namesake, Inez Kaiser, was a Kansas City native who became the first African American woman to lead a public relations firm with national clients. Luong receives a $1,000 prize with the award.
Associate Vice Chancellor Susan Renoe, an associate professor of strategic communication at the School of Journalism, was not surprised by the recognition for Luong, who works at her Science Communication, Identity and Impact Research Lab as a postdoctoral research fellow.
“Dr. Luong is a phenomenal scholar who is adept at employing a mixed-methods approach to answer complicated research questions,” Renoe said. “She exemplifies excellence in all she does and is well deserving of AEJMC’s Inez Kaiser Award.”
Luong came to the School of Journalism in 2021 after earning her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma, where she noticed that many of her mentors had degrees from Mizzou. She successfully defended her doctoral dissertation in May.
“I’m not a traditional strategic communication student, but I had the opportunity to work with professors like Susan Renoe and Kate Rose on their research as soon as I got to Mizzou. I have had great mentors who didn’t limit me to a box I needed to fit into, and so my dissertation, my research, my teaching and my professional practice were able to pull up both worlds.”
Vy Luong
Fittingly given Kaiser’s profile as a leader, Luong’s dissertation focused on how leaders at media organizations develop a “leadership identity,” or how they define and brand themselves in leadership roles.
“I think this is the largest leadership study to date in journalism,” Luong said. “I did 32 interviews and a survey with more than a thousand leaders, and I looked at how they became leaders and what challenges they faced. What motivated them? What factors impacted their career navigation?”
Her work showed that social identities — including gender, race and nationality — have very real impacts on the experience of leadership, the dynamics of power and professional mobility.
It was far from a random choice of topic. Leadership has been an important concept in her life since, at the age of six, she volunteered to be the class leader in primary school in her home country of Vietnam. Class leadership became school leadership. Eventually, she founded and led her high school’s first-ever radio club.
Today, she is on the other side of the classroom as a teacher for several strategic communication and journalism classes. She holds leadership positions in Renoe’s lab, on the MU Postdoc Association and nationally within AEJMC.
Beyond leadership, her research also reflects another trait that has followed her throughout her collegiate career: a passion for both strategic communication and journalism.
“I always combine those interests,” Luong said. “I’m not a traditional strategic communication student, but I had the opportunity to work with professors like Susan Renoe and Kate Rose on their research as soon as I got to Mizzou. I have had great mentors who didn’t limit me to a box I needed to fit into, and so my dissertation, my research, my teaching and my professional practice were able to pull up both worlds.”
Luong’s research style mirrors that academic philosophy of converging disciplines, as her dissertation demonstrated when she utilized both a survey and interviews to gather data — a form of research known as a mixed-methods design.
Now, as she embarks on the next stage of her career, she is relishing the validation that the Inez Kaiser Award and her broader success at Mizzou have given to that approach.
“It’s my last award as a graduate student, and I think it’s a good closer for my graduate journey,” she said. “In a way, it says, ‘I’m on the right track.’”
Updated: July 29, 2026