2007 National Symposium on Family Issues
Caring and Exchange Within and Across Generations
Speakers and Discussants
Ellen Ernst Kossek is Professor of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior in the School of Labor & Industrial Relations at Michigan State University. She is an internationally recognized scholar of employer support of work and family integration, diversity, and human resource innovation. Dr. Kossek is investigating flexibility practices in unionized settings with the goal of documenting mutual gains for employees and employers. She is also studying how organizations are managing and integrating professionals working on a reduced work load basis.
Cynthia Thompson is Professor of Management in the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, CUNY. Her research expertise lies in integration of work and life, particularly the extent to which supportive work-family cultures affect employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness. She has been studying work-family issues for over 20 years during which her work has been published by scholarly journals and the popular press.
Netsy Firestein is Founder/Director of the Labor Project for Working Families, a national non-profit organization working with labor unions to negotiate and advocate for better work/family policies including child care, paid family leave, eldercare and flexible work hours. As a nationally recognized expert on labor and work/family issues, she has over 20 years experience working with labor unions on work/family issues and developing contract language.
Forrest Briscoe Assistant Professor of Management, Smeal College of Business at Penn State. Dr. Briscoe's research in professional settings examines how organizational processes shape professional career flexibility, as well as how professional workers decide they can safely pursue career flexibility. He also studies changes in employee benefits, such as the transition to managed health care and domestic partner benefits.
Phyllis Moen is McKnight Presidential Chair in Sociology at University of Minnesota. Dr. Moen studies occupational careers, gender, families, and well-being over the life course. She is the founder of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University. Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly are co-PIs on a study of a major corporation's workplace policies aimed at promoting productivity by giving employees greater latitude over when and where they do their work. They are assessing the effect on health and well-being of employees and their families.
Erin Kelly is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Minnesota. Dr. Kelly studies the adoption, implementation, and consequences of anti-discrimination and family-friendly policies in U.S. workplaces. She has studied non-compliance with the Family & Medical Leave Act and development of sexual harassment policies.
Shelley M. MacDermid is Professor of Family Studies, Director of the Center for Families, and former Co-Director for the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University. The Institute assists the Secretary of Defense in studying and developing policies related to quality of life for military families. Her research focuses on relationships between job conditions and family life, with special interests in organizational size, adult development in the context of workplaces, and organizational policies that are more or less supportive of workers' lives.
Anisa Zvonkovic is Chair, Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University. Dr. Zvonkovic's research has focused on work and family issues, blending her training in relationship processes with her interest in specific job demands. She has studied workers in a variety of occupations, including commercial fishermen, long-haul truckers, flight attendants, and adoption agency workers. Her current NIH funded project concerns workers whose jobs require travel and their family lives.
Jeffrey Greenhaus is Chair, Department of Management at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business. His primary research interest concerns career-related issues with a particular emphasis on the intersection of work and family lives. He has conducted research on the antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict as well as on the factors that contribute to work-family enrichment, the positive side of the work-family interface. He is currently examining the meaning and determinants of work-family balance and the role of gender in work-family processes.
Susan Lambert is Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at University of Chicago. She is particularly interested in organizational theory and management, the relationship between work and personal life, and lower-skilled jobs and low-wage workers. Lambert is currently co-PI of a cluster-randomized field experiment that will assess the worker- and store-level effects of a workplace intervention intended to improve scheduling practices in entry-level retail jobs. Dr. Lambert has published extensively on the issue of employment and worker well-being.
Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA. Among her current projects is a study of California's paid family leave program, with a special focus on its impact on low-wage workers. Her research has focused on class inequalities among women and the ways in which that impacts work and family structure. Her most recent book is L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement.
Noemí Enchautegui de Jesús is Visiting Assistant Professor in Psychology and Senior Research Associate, Burton Blatt Institute: Centers of Innovation on Disability at Syracuse University. Her research examines the stressors faced by working poor families of diverse ethnic backgrounds and the impact on family processes (e.g., parenting and marital relationships) and well being. She also seeks to understand, through the use of qualitative and quantitative data, how family experiences spillover to the work domain and vice versa.
Maureen Perry Jenkins is Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology and Director of Clinical Training at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She studies the ways in which socio-cultural factors, such as race, gender, and social class, shape the mental health and family relationships of parents and their children. Her current research examines the work and family experiences of blue-collar families, particularly effects of the transition to parenthood and early return to work on working-class parents' psychological well-being and personal relationships.
Jennifer Glass is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include work and family life, gender stratification, organizations, and mental health. She is currently researching the effects of family-responsive policies on mothers' earnings. Another of her projects explores the influence of religiosity and religious fundamentalism on the labor force behavior and occupational attainment of women.
Chai Feldblum is Professor of Law and Co-Director, Workplace Flexibility 2010, at Georgetown University Law Center. She is responsible for overseeing the strategy, legislative lawyering, policy research, media and constituent outreach components of Workplace Flexibility 2010. Dr. Feldblum served as the principal lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union's AIDS Project where she drafted the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Ellen Galinsky is President and Co-Founder of Families and Work Institute, a Manhattan-based non-profit organization that conducts research on the changing family, changing workforce and changing community. Ms. Galinsky co-directs The National Study of the Changing Workforce, a comprehensive representative study of the U.S. workforce, updated every five years. It provides extensive information about workers' lives on and off the job and is widely used by policy makers, employers and the media.
Michael Smyer is Co-Director of the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility, and Professor of Psychology at Boston College. Active in geriatric mental health research for more than 30 years, his current work focuses on the impact of the workplace and flexible work options for older workers and their family members. He and his colleagues are assessing the impact of cultural, organizational, and policy contexts for the management of a global workforce facing the challenges of aging.
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