Kathleen Mulligan

Kathleen Mulligan is the Director of Labor Leadership Programs, and Director of the National Labor Leadership Initiative, at Cornell University’s ILR School. Kathleen has twenty years of experience working in the labor movement, primarily focused on building community-labor coalitions that contest for power in cities across the country. A significant element of that work involved building coalitions that could win requirements on publicly-funded construction projects to increase career opportunities for women and people of color to become union trades journeymen.

Before working at Cornell, Kathleen served as Deputy Director for the AFL-CIO’s GOLD Team (Governance, Organization & Leadership Development); and spent 9 years at the Partnership for Working Families, most of that time as Deputy Director. She has a PhD in political science from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a strong commitment to building a more equitable economy for all workers and communities, especially in rust-belt cities like her home, Milwaukee.