Dr. Mary Gatta is Senior Advisor of Workforce Policy and Research at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University, an M.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University and a B.A. in Social Science from Providence College. Her areas of expertise include gender and public policy, low wage workers, earnings inequality, and sex segregation studies.

Dr. Gatta currently directs an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded project that provides technical assistance and resources to states to scale up a New Jersey pilot project of online learning for low wage workers throughout the country. Her book on this project, Not Just Getting By: The New Era of Flexible Workforce Development released from Lexington Press's imprint Press. This book chronicles groundbreaking thinking and research on new and innovative workforce development initiatives that delivers skills training to single working poor mothers via the Internet.

Her book, Juggling Food and Feelings: Emotional Balance in the Workplace was released from Lexington Press in 2002. This work investigates how individuals maintain and manage their emotions in an attempt to rebalance them as they are interacting in the workplace. Using the setting of the restaurant, Dr. Gatta explores differences in emotional balancing practices among male and female servers, the use and of emotion scripts by restaurant managers, and degrees of agency among servers.

In addition to books, Dr. Gatta has published numerous scholarly articles and public policy papers on topics including gender equity in academia, workforce development policies for low wage workers, the gender based pay gap, and occupational sex segregation.

Email: gatta@rci.rutgers.edu |  Download in Adobe pdf: curriculum vitae

Heather A. McKay, Director

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Mary Murphree, Ph.D., Senior Advisor

From 1985 until March 1, 2005, Dr. Mary Murphree served as the Regional Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Region 2 Women's Bureau. In that capacity, she represented the interests of approximately six million working women in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. This Spring, following her retirement from government, Dr. Murphree became the Outreach Coordinator of the Sloan Center for Innovative Training and Workforce Development at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. An internationally known speaker and expert on women's employment, Dr. Murphree has particular expertise in technology and employment as well as low-wage labor issues such as the policy challenges of "contingent work" (part-time, temporary and independent contracting) and the equal opportunity challenges faced nationally by women and minority workers.

Dr. Murphree earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. Her dissertation analyzed the caste system and changing role of legal secretaries in Wall Street law firms, as a result of information technology and the introduction of paralegal personnel during the 1970s. Prior to joining the federal government, Dr. Murphree was a visiting professor at Queens College, City University of New York. She also held a post-doctoral fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center in a program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health on The Economics and Sociology of Women and Work. She also directed Murphree Associates, a workplace consulting firm, whose clients included high technology manufacturing firms, national human resource organizations as well as several New York law firms.

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Kevin P. McCabe, Senior Advisor

Kevin P. McCabe has a strong commitment to workers in New Jersey. He has served in numerous high level positions in city and state governments. As Commissioner, Mr. McCabe oversaw all job training and workforce development programs, business services, labor market information, unemployment insurance, disability services, and enforcement of the state's labor standards and safety rules.

Prior to being appointed commissioner Mr. McCabe served as Deputy Commissioner from 2002 through 2004. He led efforts leading to the stronger enforcement of the state's wage and hour laws and the upgrading of services offered at One-Stop Career Centers throughout the state. Mr. McCabe spearheaded the state's efforts to open business resource centers. Before joining the Department of Labor, Mr. McCabe served in the Office of the Mayor of Woodbridge Township beginning in 1992. He served in several administrative capacities, including chief of staff.

Currently Mr. McCabe is serving as the Director of Special Programs at the New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters. Mr. McCabe is also collaborating with Mary Gatta on her book, Not Just Getting By: The New Era of Flexible Workforce Development, due out Fall 2005 from Lexington Press's imprint Press for Change.

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Harold Stafford, Senior Advisor

In 2000 Harold Stafford was appointed as Secretary of Labor for the Delaware Department of Labor. Prior to that he was Acting Director at the Delaware Economic Development Office (DEDO). From July of 1998 to September of 2000, Secretary Stafford was the director of administration at DEDO where he developed and managed the department's operating and capital budgets which totaled over $150 million. At DEDO, he chaired the Performance Measures Committee and coordinated the agency's Y2K planning activities.

For over 12 years, Secretary Stafford served in various positions in the Department of Correction. Ten of those years he was a bureau chief. While Chief of Community Custody and Supervision he provided management support and direction for the bureau which was responsible for supervising over 15,000 probation/parole clients and 500 offenders in halfway houses. As Bureau Chief of Industries and Services, Secretary Stafford was responsible for developing and operating statewide academic and vocational educational programs that were offered in seven institutions. He also prepared the bureau's strategic plan and managed the operating and capital budgets, which totaled over $6.5 million.

Secretary Stafford has been serving the state of Delaware for over 27 years. During that time he has been a member of the State Personnel Selection Committee for the Management Fellows Program, the State Contracting and Purchasing Advisory Council, the American Society for Quality Control, and the Governor's Task Force on Workforce Quality and Personnel Reform.

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Susan V. Lawler, Senior Advisor

Susan Lawler, former Commissioner of the Division of Career Services (DCS) in the Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development, has significant professional experience as an advocate for e-learning, experiential education, and workforce development.  From 2003-2007 Ms Lawler directed DCS, a 400 person agency charged with managing 28 federal and state funding grants related to employment and training.  Her responsibilities included awareness building and oversight of the 37 MA One Stop Career Careers.  During her tenure with the Commonwealth significant technology based training opportunities were made available to DCS and workforce partner staff with first year adoption resulting in 4,000 online courses completed by 500 staff.  Additionally, Ms. Lawler spearheaded the first MA collaboration with the Sloan Foundation and MA Colleges Online (MCO) to pilot the efficacy of e-learning to impact earnings for low wage workers.

Ms. Lawler spent seven years (1996-2003) with IBM Corporation, originally to participate in the evaluation and analysis of a new distributed learning software product designed to deliver training to corporations and higher education.  In a rapidly changing e-learning start-up market, she was quickly promoted and selected for increasingly complex management and marketing roles within three IBM business units.

Prior to her corporate and government experience, Ms. Lawler spent over twenty years at Northeastern University in Boston, MA where she directed a number of graduate business programs including Northeastern’s highly regarded Cooperative Education MBA.  Ms. Lawler holds a B.A. in Political Science and a M.Ed. in College Counseling and Student Personnel from Northeastern in addition to having completing advanced graduate coursework in human resource management, organizational behavior, and marketing.