Kate Cooney is a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and a Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise and Management at the Yale School of Management. Her work draws upon institutional theory to trace the intersections between business and social sectors. Among other subjects, she has studied emerging forms of social, business, and legal organization; transparency in corporate supply chains; and strategies to foster inclusive economic development within U.S. cities. From 2003–2012, Cooney was Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, where her research interests included social innovation in the nonprofit sector, sustainability of social enterprise organizations, and workforce development with disadvantaged populations. She recently launched the CitySCOPE podcast, which discusses examples of inclusive economic growth in urban areas across the U.S. Cooney is a 1993 graduate of College of the Holy Cross. She received an M.S.W. and a Ph.D. from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in 1998 and 2003, respectively. Cooney has served on the Board of Directors of Dwight Hall at Yale, the nonprofit that serves as Yale University’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice. In 2019, Cooney founded the Inclusive Economic Development Lab which aims to bring together academics, practitioners, students and local stakeholders to explore different topics related to Inclusive Economic Development.
