Scientific Advisory Board

Ellen Galinsky is president and co-founder of Families and Work Institute (FWI), a Manhattan-based nonprofit organization that conducts research on the changing family, changing workforce and changing community.

At the Institute, Ellen co-directs the National Study of the Changing Workforce, the most comprehensive nationally representative study of the U.S. workforce, updated every five years and originally conducted in 1977 by the U.S. Department of Labor. She also co-directs When Work Works, a project on workplace flexibility and effectiveness funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that has produced a series of research papers. Ellen launched the National Study of Employers, a nationally representative study that has tracked trends in employment benefits, policies and practices since 1998.

At FWI, Ellen directs a project on career flexibility in academia and the Supporting Work Project, a Ford Foundation project that is funding communities across the country to connect lower-wage employees to publicly funded work support through their employers. Ms. Galinsky staffs the Conference Board's Work Life Leadership Council that, since 1983, has offered a forum for 45 business leaders to focus on work life issues in the business community. Ellen is directing Mind in the Making, a project on the science of early learning that includes a television science show, videos for families, and Learning Modules for Early Childhood Teachers.

Ellen is the author of more than 35 books and reports, including the groundbreaking book, Ask the Children. She has published more than 100 articles in academic journals, books, and magazines.

A leading authority on work-family issues, she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2004 Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College. She was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources in 2005 and awarded a 2006 Purpose Prize Fellow. Before co-founding FWI, for 25 years Ellen was on the faculty of Bank Street College of Education, where she helped establish the field of work and family life.

She holds a Master of Science degree in Child Development/Education from Bank Street College of Education, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Child Study from Vassar College and numerous honorary degrees.

Ms. Galinsky is also a photographer and has shown her work at many prestigious institutions in and around the New York area. Ellen is married with two grown children, both of whom are following their mother in making a positive impact on the world around them—Philip, an ethnomusicologist, and Lara, Senior Vice President at Echoing Green, which provides seed funding to more than 500 social entrepreneurs.