Kathleen E. Christensen founded and directs the Program on The Workplace, Work Force and Working Families at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Under her leadership, the Workplace, Work Force and Working Families program has played a vital role in developing work-family scholarship and in supporting effective workplaces that meet the needs of working parents and older workers. To that end, in 2003, the Foundation launched the National Initiative on Workplace Flexibility, a collaborative effort designed to make workplace flexibility a standard of the American workplace

Prior to joining the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Dr. Christensen was a Professor of Psychology at the Graduate School and University Center of City University of New York and before that served as a policy analyst at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.
 
Dr. Christensen has published extensively on the changing nature of work and its relationship to the family. Her books include Contingent Work: American Employment Relations in Transition (Cornell University Press, 1998); Turbulence in the American Workplace (Oxford University Press, 1991); Women and Home-based Work: The Unspoken Contract (Henry Holt, 1988) and The New Era of Home-based Work: Directions and Policies (Westview Press, 1988). Her editorials have appeared on the national Op Ed pages of the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Atlanta Constitution.

Dr. Christensen is a member of the Conference Board’s Work-Life Leadership Council and has served on a number of national work-life advisory boards.

She received her doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University, where she was a Danforth Fellow, as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. She has also been a Mellon Fellow and Rockefeller Fellow. In 2004, she was awarded the Work-Life Legacy Award by the Families and Work Institute for her role in founding the field of work-life.

Areas of Sloan Program Interest

• Workplace, Workforce and Working Families, including
  • Basic Research on Working Families & Everyday Life
  • Industry Specific Workplace Flexibility
  • The Sloan National Workplace Flexibility Initiative
  • Aging and Flexible Work