Joan Ball spent more than 15 years in the public relations business before making the transition from the boardroom to the classroom in 2007. She currently teaches marketing in the Tobin School of Business at St. John’s University in Queens, NY and writes for Beliefnet.com. A media relations expert, she has been the corporate spokesperson for a variety of large and mid-sized professional services firms. Central to her story is the extent to which she allowed her career and the money, prestige and possessions that came with it to overshadow the things that were most important in life. In Flirting with Faith, she shares with bold candor both her challenges and successes—from single motherhood, to alcohol addiction to unbalanced priorities in the midst of apparent accomplishment—with a transparency and openness that will be evident to even the most skeptical reader.  She and her husband Martin live in suburban New York with their son Ian. Her adult children, Kelsey (20) and Andrew (21) are undergraduate students elsewhere in New York.