Patricia Ryan Madson is the author of  IMPROV WISDOM: DON’T PREPARE, JUST SHOW UP.(Bell Tower, 2005) and a professor Emerita from Stanford University where she taught since 1977. In their Drama Department she served as the head of the undergraduate acting program and developed the improvisation program. In 1998 she was the winner of the Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Innovation in Undergraduate Education at Stanford. She founded and coached the Stanford Improvisors and taught beginning and advanced level courses in Improvisation for undergraduate as well as adults in Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program. In 1996 she founded the Creativity Initiative at Stanford, an interdisciplinary alliance of faculty who share the belief that creativity can be taught. Patricia has taught Design Improv for the School of Engineering, and was a guest lecturer for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and for the Mayfield Fellows Program.

She teaches regularly for the Esalen Institute, and has given workshops for the California Institute for Integral Studies, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, the National Association of Drama Therapists, the Western Psychological Association, Duke University East Asian Studies Center , Wellness in the Workplace for BC University and the Meaningful Life Therapy Association in Japan.