Brent Ruben is a distinguished professor of communication, the founder and a senior university fellow at the Center for Organizational Leadership, and the advisor for strategy and planning to the executive vice president for academic affairs at Rutgers. He is the author of numerous books and articles on organizational leadership, communication, assessment, planning, and change in higher education. Recent books by Ruben include Sustainable Change in Higher Education: Leadership Principles and Practices of Collaborative Leadership (2022) and A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education, 2nd edition (2021, with Rutgers colleagues Richard De Lisi and Ralph Gigliotti). He has published extensively on cross-cultural, health, and organizational communication as well as systems theory.

Ruben was a founder of the Department of Communication at Rutgers, the first director of the PhD program at the School of Communication and Information, and the founder and first president of the Network for Change and Continuous Innovation in Higher Education. He received the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Foundation Inaugural Award for National Leadership Excellence in Education and other scholarly and professional awards from the National Communication Association, National Association for College and University Business Officers, Rutgers, and other organizations.