Ellen Galinsky: Turning Dreams Into Action for American families
President and Co-Founder of Families and Work Institute (FWI)
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ellen-galinsky/5/2a9/251
Twitter: @ellengalinsky
Bio:
Ellen Galinsky, President and Co-Founder of Families and Work Institute (FWI) helped establish the field of work and family life during the time she was at Bank Street College of Education, where she was on the faculty for 25 years. Her more than 100 books and reports include the best-selling Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, Ask The Children, and the now classic The Six Stages of Parenthood. She has published over 300 articles in journals, books and magazines.
Innovating in Field of Work:
• FWI works to ensure that the rigorous findings can or do lead to action. All action projects are considered change experiments—to be evaluated and improved.
• Ellen is a pioneer in early childhood learning with her work on applying neuroscience and executive skills. She undertook 14-years of research on the best early education, resulting in the best-selling book, Mind in the Making: the Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs. The book has been translated into training modules, now in more than 15 parts of the country
Impact:
• Looking back on our 25-year history we can see that FWI’s research takes on emerging issues before they crest and includes some of the most comprehensive research on the U.S. workforce available.
• The Institute’s work has helped drive more effective, and data-driven solutions, resulting in action. Our studies are quoted in the media more than once a day on average, are cited by decision makers in business, government, and the public, and have led to concrete change.
Role Model:
• Nurtures staff and interns at FWI and speaks to many groups of younger women (and men)¸—approximately 100 speeches a year—inspiring them to bring change to their own lives, workplaces and communities and encouraging people to see that you can become a national voice for change
• Always takes time with people who reach out to support, connect and help them find and realize their dreams. Importantly to her, she is very proud of her daughter, Lara Galinsky, Sr VP of Echoing Green, and her “Work on Purpose” efforts to help young people grow their careers.
Reinvention / Momentum:
• Ellen has a long history of disruption At every stage of parenting, she turned the obstacles she and others faced into opportunities to instigate change:
• Helped to found a national movement to provide new support, the Family Resource Coalition
• Co- conducted a Ford Foundation study on exemplary child care in the US and helped found an infant-toddler child care program at Bank Street College
• Studied and wrote the 1st book on parent development, The Six Stages of Parenthood
• On seeing that work and family were considered largely separate domains, she left her job and co-founded the Families and Work Institute (FWI)
• Continues to create resources for a multitude of different sectors
• Collaborated with the White House on the Summit on Working Families (June 2014) and spoke at it
• A photographer, she is photographing Route 66, studying the depiction of life on this iconic road that is an emblem of American expansion westward She has had 3 shows of her photographs in the past 6 months
“Ellen doesn’t judge herself by what others say about her but by what she contributes to others.”