Families and Work Institute
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006
Informing decision-making on the changing workforce, family and community
Ellen Galinsky, 64, co-founder and president of the Families and Work Institute, brings research to bear on policies and initiatives that affect both changing families and changing workplaces. She has played a pivotal role in creating and developing the field of work and family life, in working with companies, large and small, to help them understand the critical issues their employees face and to take practical steps to address these issues. In the 1990s, her work has advanced the causes of women in the workforce, generational issues, workplace flexibility, and the low-wage workforce. Her work has also been instrumental in amplifying the voices of youth, through nationally representative studies of their views on working parents, their future employment, violence, and learning. In 2005, following her own mother’s death, Galinsky has deepened her focus on aging in America, on workplace flexibility that meets the needs of older workers, on elder care, and on family caregivers of the elderly.