Pam Alexander was a senior research scientist through September 2010 at the Wellesley Centers for Women, where she conducted research on gender-based violence. After getting her Bachelors from Wake Forest University, Dr. Alexander received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Emory University in 1980, was an assistant professor and director of the Psychological Services Center at the University of Memphis, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, and a senior research investigator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research on Youth and Social Policy.
Dr. Alexander’s research focused on family violence generally, with a particular emphasis on intimate partner violence. She was interested in the role that childhood trauma played in increasing the risk for both the experience and perpetration of intimate partner violence as well as child maltreatment. Her work on the development and evaluation of intervention programs for intimate partner violence was informed by attachment theory with its attention to affect regulation and implicit views of attachment relationships, by motivational interviewing with its emphasis on values and choices, and by mindfulness approaches with their focus on learning to recognize, tolerate and regulate emotions. She believed that taking into account both the intergenerational context of violence as well as the current context of the relationship was essential in understanding, preventing and eradicating gender-based violence.
Dr. Alexander’s research career originally began with a concentration on the long-term effects of incest. In 1986, she received funding by the National Institute on Mental Health to conduct a psychotherapy outcome study on the effectiveness of group therapy for adult female incest survivors. Given the inevitable overlap between different types of violence perpetrated within the family, she began to focus more on the intergenerational transmission of violence, including abusive parenting and the perpetration of and vulnerability to intimate partner violence, with an emphasis on the attachment relationships between parents and children and between intimate partners. Her research was based on clinical samples of men and women (ranging from batterers to battered women and incest survivors seeking services to parents at risk for child abuse) and samples of women recruited from the community (such as adult female incest survivors and mothers with young children). She evaluated both the U.S. Army’s and the U.S. Marines’ New Parent Support Program, a home visitation child abuse prevention program.
Two federally funded projects completed by Dr. Alexander consisted of the following. First, a project funded by the Centers for Disease Control examined the determinants and consequences of readiness to change in a sample of more than 1,500 batterers court-ordered to treatment. Second, a project funded by the National Institute of Justice compared the effectiveness of a stages-of-change/motivational interviewing (SOCMI) model of group therapy with standard batterer treatment for batterers court-ordered to treatment.
Dr. Hill is professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University. During the 2007-2008 academic year she served as a Senior Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women and as a Newhouse Visiting Scholar at Wellesley College. Her work at Wellesley involved analyzing the nearly 25,000 pieces of correspondence she received in the wake of her testimony at the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for a project titled "Lessons in the Letters: Learning About Race and Gender From the Private Responses to the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearing." She opened the WCW fall 2007 Lunchtime Seminar Series with a presentation on this topic on October 4th at the Centers' Cheever House. Dr. Hill earned her J.D. from Yale University and her B.S. from Oklahoma State University. Her scholarly publications include:
"Choice, Social Structure, and Educational Policy." Race, Markets and Social Structures. 1st ed. Ed. Emma Coleman Jordan. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2007 (forthcoming)
"The Embodiment of Equal Justice Under the Law." Nova Law Review 31. 2 (2007): 1-19. (forthcoming)
"What Difference Will Women Judges Make? Looking Once More at the "Woman Question"." Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change. 1st ed. Ed. Barbara Kellerman and Deborah Rhode. New York: Jossey-Boss, 2007. 1-29. (forthcoming)
"A History of Hollow Promises: How Choice Jurisprudence Fails to Achieve Educational Equality." Michigan Journal of Race & Law 12. 1 (2007): 107-159.
The Scholarly Legacy of A. Leon Higginbotham: Voice, Storytelling and Narrative. Rutgers Law Review, 2001.
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 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.
2018WCW partners with University of Illinois at Chicago on a $7 million, multi-year project to evaluate and compare depression prevention programs for teens. Over $1.6 million of the award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute goes to WCW.
The first R15 in the social sciences at Wellesley College is awarded to WCW by the National Institute Of Child Health and Human Development to explore associations between psychosocial and behavioral health of early adolescents while exposing undergraduate students to research techniques.
2018WCW organizes and hosts The Power of Data: How Gender-Focused Research Institutes in Africa Can Support Rural Women and Girls during the 62nd session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
2017WCW, IWPR, and Spelman College's WRRC cosponsor a major p
olicy-research forum for change makers in Washington, DC--From Persistence to Power: Facts, Truth & Equity for Women.
2016WCW scholars offer a series of insights and expertise on U.S. policy issues that affect the lives of women and girls, families and communities.
2016
WCW organizes and hosts The Power of Data: How Women- and Gender-Focused Research Organizations Can Advance SDG 5 during the 60th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
2015The Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative 
launched, focused on research that addresses causes and consequences of gender-based violence and the social, health and justice system responses to violent crime and victimization.
2014 WCW marks its 40th anniversary with new brand identity and strategic plan.
2014
The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault cited the Shifting Boundaries middle school intervention program as an effective strategy for reducing rates of sexual violence.
2014
WCW organizes and hosts The Power of Data: How Research Advances Social Change for Women and Girls, featuring a panel of change makers, during the 58th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
2013-
2014The White House and U.S. Department of Education cite Shifting Boundaries, a WCW intervention and research program, in key communications about the Violence Against Women Act and addressing teen dating violence in secondary schools and higher education.
2013Connections with, and references to, WCW research and scholars grows with thought leaders and policy makers in Washington, D.C.
2012 Partners HealthCare commits $1 million to the Boston Public Health Commission for a 
collaboration with Boston Public Schools (BPS) to integrate Open Circle -- which celebrates its 25th anniversary -- into 23 schools. The Novo Foundation awards Open Circle $500,000+ to evaluate the BPS initiative and to scale up Open Circle.
2011
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awards WCW $2.9M over three years to improve teacher quality by expanding the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity).
2011The National Institute of Mental Health awards WCW $1.3M over five years for CATCH-IT, an evaluation of a primary care/Internet-based depression prevention intervention for at-risk teens and their families.
2011
WCW begins the year by successfully completing its 35th Anniversary fundraising drive, exceeding $4.7 million to support new, cutting-edge research.
2009-
2010WCW celebrates 35 years of research and action with exciting galas and a dynamic symposium, attracting hundreds of attendees at each event.
2009
WCW and IWPR cosponsor major policy-research conference in Washington, DC--Achieving Equity for Women: Policy Alternatives for the New Administration.
2009The Robert Bowne Foundation awards more than $2.1 million dollars over five years to NIOST for the National Afterschool Matters Initiative to promote research and professional development for the out-of-school time industry.
2007 
WCW and UNICEF cosponsor innovative conference in Bangkok bringing together leading Asian women's rights and children's rights advocates to address the connections in their work.
2005-
2006WCW leads two projects on gender and science, technology, engineering, and math funded by National Science Foundation (Fairer Science and SISTEM).
2005 The Postdoctoral Behavioral Research Training on Variations in Child and Adolescent Development sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is initiated and offers three full-time research fellow positions.
2004 
Women's Review of Books was re-launched in partnership with Old City Publishing after a one-year suspension.
2004
WCW hosted a groundbreaking international conference on violence against women. Designed to maximize networking and the formation of collaborations across and within countries, Innovations in Understanding Violence Against Women explored innovative concepts and research methodologies as well as vital work done at the grassroots level.
2003WCW researches and reports on gender violence in schools in developing countries for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
2002WCW held the first-ever Human Rights Tribunal on Domestic Violence and Child Custody. At the Tribunal, battered mothers shared their experiences in family court litigation and voiced their recommendations for change.
2001WCW received NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. This standing allows the Wellesley Centers for Women to designate official representatives to a wide range of UN meetings held around the globe.
2000WCW makes fundraising history with the successful completion of its three-year $10 million Women's Century Fund endowment drive.
1999 WCW receives gift from The Stone Foundation establishes Empowering Children for life: The Robert S. and Grace W. Stone Primary Prevention Initiatives.
1998A grant from the Centers for Disease Control creates the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center , a consortium of the Wellesley Centers for Women, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of Missouri at St. Louis.
1998 Conference on Work and Family, "Today’s Realities and Tomorrow’s Visions," held, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Business and Professional Women's Foundation.
1997 Women's Rights Network joins Wellesley Centers for Women.
1995 Stone Center and Center for Research on Women become a single organization: the Wellesley Centers for Women.
1995 
Jean Baker Miller Training Institute is established. Scholars from the JBMTI have brought Relational-Cultural Theory to over 100,000 people in workshops, trainings, conventions, and symposia sponsored by various groups throughout the world.
1994New initiative on adolescent sexuality begins with grant on Femininity Ideology and the Risk of Unintended Pregnancy.
1993The Women in Prison Project initiated to develop an integrated relational and multicultural approach to the care and treatment of women in prison and after release. Final report is issued in 1995.
1992Major new initiative on Sexual harassment in Schools launched with support of individual donors. Nationally recognized as a prime source for information, the project's work has resulted in a book, journal and magazine articles, book chapters, four widely-used teachers' guides, and multiple workshops and training events.
1992Study group results in investigation of growth and development of African-American and Puerto Rican Children.
1992
The AAUW report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, researched and written at the Center for Research on Women, focuses national consciousness on issues of gender equity in education. Report is translated into Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and French for the 4th United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing.
1991Five-year research effort, Pathways for Women in the Sciences, examines barriers to young women in scientific fields. Reports are issued by Center for Research on Women in 1993 and 1997.
1990Two groundbreaking conferences, Gender and International Relations and Learning Together: A National Conference of Teen Parenting and Child Care Programs, provide an arena for discussion of critical issues facing society.
1989The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awards WCW $8.3 million over 15 years as part of the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.
1989
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, a groundbreaking essay, is first published as part of the Stone Center Work in Progress series.
1988Conference on the Economic Condition of Black Women held with funding from The Ford Foundation.
1987
The Open Circle Social Competency Program established to teach problem-solving skills to elementary students. Since its inception, the program has trained more than 5000 teachers who have introduced the Open Circle Curriculum to more than 200,000 children in 240 elementary schools and 90 diverse communities in New England and New Jersey.
1987National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum founded. To date, over 36,000 teacher-years have been volunteered by teachers participating in seminars led by more than 1,850 trained SEED leaders.
1986First Learning from Women Conference, co-sponsored by the Stone Center and Cambridge Hospital as part of the Harvard Continuing Education Program, is held. This biannual conference has attracted more than 9,000 participants over the last 20 years.
1986Pioneering research on gender and stress, which examines women's roles in the work place and men's roles in the home and family.
1983The Women's Review of Books begins publication.
1982Center for Research on Women and Stone Center collaborate to offer five-year National Institute on Mental Health-sponsored post-doctoral research training program on Sex Roles and Mental Health.
1981Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies is established at Wellesley College under the leadership of Jean Baker Miller, founding director.
1979 
National Institute on Out-of-School Time (originally known as the School-Age Child Care Project) begins extensive research, education, training, publication, and program development designed to improve the quality of children's out-of-school time.
1976International Conference on Women and Development attracts 117 women from 32 countries.
1977 CRW conducts an evaluation for the U.S. Department of Education of curricula, research, and outreach materials developed to promote gender equitable education.
1974
Center for Research on Women (CRW) is established at Wellesley College under the presidency of Barbara Newell, deanship of Alice Ilchman, and leadership of Carolyn Elliot, founding director.
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