Ellen Galinsky

Ellen Galinsky is the President of Families and Work Institute (FWI), an organization she co-founded in 1989. She is the elected President of the Work and Family Researchers Network, a network of several thousand researchers globally and additionally serves as a senior advisor to the Immediate Office of the Assistant Secretary of Youth Mental Health at the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Between March 2016 and September 2022, she served as Chief Science Officer of the Bezos Family Foundation. Before co-founding FWI, she spent more than two decades at the Bank Street College of Education. Her life’s work revolves identifying important societal questions as they emerge, conducting research to seek answers, and turning the findings into action. She strives to be ahead of the curve, to address compelling issues, and to provide rigorous data that can affect our lives. Over her career, her research has focused on work-life, children’s development, youth voice, child-care, parent-professional relationship, and parental development.

Galinsky is the author of Mind in the Making, a best-selling book on early learning that the New York Times called “an iconic parenting manual,” and Judy Woodruff of the PBS NewsHour named “must reading for everyone who cares about America’s fate in the 21st Century.” Her book on adolescent development, The Breakthrough Years, will be published in early 2024 and involved nine-years of research, including three original studies. She is also the author of 90 books/reports and 360 articles for books, academic journals, magazines, and the Web.

Other career highlights include serving as the elected President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (the largest group of early childhood professionals), being elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources (the highest honor in human resources), serving as parent expert in the Mister Rogers Talks with Parents series, and receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Work and Family Researchers Network.