Kathleen’s professional career at NORC began with the facilitation of the intellectual and programmatic activities of the NICHD-funded Population Research Center and the NIA-funded Center on Aging. For these programs, she developed institutional grant proposals and managed associated activities, including a weekly research seminar series, the Demography Workshop, which is still ongoing and jointly sponsored by the Academic Research Centers and the University of Chicago’s Division of the Social Sciences. She also planned and oversaw national conferences and acted as liaison among the many constituencies of the Center and provided collaboration to NORC’s financial management staff regarding Center budgets. 

She led the Academic Research Centers for 10 years prior to stepping down to focus on mentoring more junior staff on research development. She developed NORC’s Institutional Review Board 23 years ago and continues to play an advisory role. Her main focus, however, is research business development, drawing on her experience developing grant proposals for the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Education and various foundation. 

Kathleen’s professional experience also includes more than 15 years as an arts administrator and program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she was affiliated with the Elvehjem Museum of Art and the School of Music. There, she wrote successful grant applications to the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Institute for Museum Services, Wisconsin Arts Board, and other cultural arts organizations and foundations. In addition, she was involved in the establishment of the Sunday Afternoon Live at the Elvehjem, a program that brought musicians into a museum setting for an afternoon concert. Kathleen designed and managed an arts education program, raised funds to support arts research and programming, engaged in outreach and public information, and established a small local arts program that brought poetry, theatre and the visual arts to low-income children in public housing projects.