Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek is an award-winning U.S. social scientist who does pioneering work to advance better work globally across occupations and improve employment experiences at work and home.

She holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Yale University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor’s degree with honors in psychology from Mount Holyoke College. For the past 5 years, she has been ranked in the top two percent of scientists in business for global research impact by Stanford/ Elseviers' ranking.

Ellen was the first elected President of the Work-Family Researchers Network. She is elected a Fellow in the Academy of Management and the American Psychological Association and the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She served as an expert on the U.S. National Academies of Sciences Committee on Family Policies to support Caregivers working in STEM. She was elected to the Board of Governors and Chair of the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management. 

She is a 2026-2027 Senior Global Fellow at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and serves on a number of advisory board to advance women’s leadership, and work-family relationships. Other fellowships include VMWare Women’s Leadership CASBS Fellow at Stanford University, the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Management Emerita, Research Director at the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence, and Distinguished Family Scholar at Purdue University; and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University. She has been a visiting scholar and awarded fellowships at the University of Bologna; Kings College U.K.; Cranfield University; Queen Mary University of London; EDHEC in France, and UNISA in Australia. She also served a decade on IESE’s work-family and women’s leadership advisory board in Barcelona, Spain.

Ellen has worked for major corporations in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. She has been invited to speak in many countries about work-life-family issues, including flexible working, remote and hybrid work, and employment policies/practices to remove barriers to advancing women in higher education and business. Her research has been funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control, the National Science Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan, Russell Sage, and Gerber Foundations. She is a published author of several books including Creating Gender-Inclusive Organizations: Lessons from Research and Practice and CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age, which has been translated into several languages. She is married with four children and a dog named Max.

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