Rachel I. Robbins, M.P.P.

Research Associate
National Institute on Out-of-School Time

At the Centers, Rachel worked on a wide variety of research and evaluation projects. She worked with United Way of Massachusetts Bay as an evaluator on an initiative to build partnerships between afterschool programs and schools. In addition, she worked with the State of Maine researching and writing technical assistance papers on afterschool issues, specifically focusing on inclusion efforts for special needs students. Rachel also focused her time on building a professional development infrastructure for afterschool and youth workers in the Boston area. She worked with a variety of Boston-based organizations and higher education institutions to pilot the first credential for school-age and youth workers in Boston.
Prior to joining Wellesley Centers for Women, Rachel held a legislative research position in Alexandria, Virginia, tracking state health care bills and presenting legislative reports to pharmaceutical companies. She also held a post at the Boston Globe conducting marketing research and designing surveys.

Cathy Pastan, M.S., CCC

Consulting Director
Open Circle Project

Cathy has worked with language impaired children in elementary schools in Needham and Wellesley, Massachusetts, as well as with adults in hospitals in Lynn, Massachusetts and New Haven, Connecticut. In her former career as a Speech and Language Therapist, her focus was on helping people develop strategies to compensate for weak language processing skills and to promote useful pragmatic social skills.

Her work in the field of pragmatic social skills led directly to developing a social competency curriculum for elementary school children. After many years working in the Wellesley Public Schools, Cathy joined the Open Circle Project in 1990, where she is currently its Consulting Director. In this role, she is a mentor and coach to the Open Circle consulting staff as well as the corps of dedicated teachers who make up the project’s Consulting Teacher groups. Cathy is also a member of the Open Circle training and consulting staff. Open Circle currently trains and consults to more than 500 teachers per year—that translates to touching the lives of thousands of students each year. Cathy is excited to be part of this wonderful project and to make a positive difference for children and the entire school community.

Our History

In 1974, Wellesley College President Barbara Newell, Ph.D., founded the Wellesley Center for Research on Women in Higher Education and the Professions. With seed funding from the Carnegie Corporation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, the center set out to create a home for feminist social scientists to do the kind of bold, audacious research and action programs that they could not do anywhere else.

In 1981, the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies was founded with a generous grant from Grace W. and Robert S. Stone. The center, first led by Jean Baker Miller, M.D., author of the groundbreaking book, Toward a New Psychology of Women, became the origin of Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT), recognized by the American Psychological Association’s Theories of Psychotherapy Series as ‘one of the 10 most important psychological theories today.’

The Center for Research on Women joined with the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies in 1995 to become a single organization: the Wellesley Centers for Women. Since then, research scientists and project directors at WCW have conducted groundbreaking interdisciplinary studies on a broad range of social issues, including education and child care, economic security, mental health, youth and adolescent development, and gender-based violence.

Our Leadership

Center for Research on Women (1974 - 1995)

Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies (1981 - 1995)

Wellesley Centers for Women (1995 - present)