To: Wellesley College Faculty and Staff
From: President Paula A. Johnson and Courtney Coile, Provost and Lia Gelin Poorvu ’56 Dean of the College
Re: Announcing the new Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Executive Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women
Date: July 8, 2026
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Laura Mamo as the next executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW), one of the nation’s largest research institutes focused on women. Currently the director and a professor of public health at the Health Equity Institute at San Francisco State University, Laura will join the College in September.
As the Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Executive Director, Laura will play a key leadership role in advancing WCW’s core mission: to drive meaningful progress for women and girls through research and action. She will also be a professor in the Department of Sociology, pending successful tenure review.
Laura is an outstanding scholar and an institution builder with a proven track record of establishing partnerships and programs that enable interdisciplinary, community-based, policy-relevant research. Her scholarship and her ability to mentor and support researchers in all career stages, combined with her targeted advocacy work, make her the ideal strategic leader for this role. She will build on the centers’ 50-year legacy of propelling social change through rigorous research and scholarship to lead WCW into its next era.
Laura’s research lies at the intersection of medical sociology, feminist science and technology studies, women’s health, and society. She is the author of books on reproductive technology and on the HPV vaccine, published by the Duke University and University of Chicago presses, and has received funding for her research from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Laura earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Laura shared, “I’m excited to build on WCW’s work and continue contributing theoretically grounded, empirical research that can drive solutions for women, gender equity, and communities. I can think of no better place to be than alongside my colleagues at WCW, and I look forward to all that we will accomplish together.”
We want to thank the members of the search committee for their work: Tracy Gleason, Nellie Zuckerman Cohen & Anne Cohen Heller Professor of Health Sciences and professor of psychology; Katherine Collins ’90, founder, Honeybee Capital Foundation; Miranda Daniloff Mancusi, executive director, Wagner Centers for Wellesley in the World; Carolyn Slaboden, chief human resources officer; Smitha Radhakrishnan, Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas, professor of sociology, and director of the Chandler Center for the Environment and the Ann Maurer ’51 Public Speaking Program; and Nicole Maestas ’91, John D. MacArthur Professor of Economics and Health Care Policy and chair, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School.
We also want to express our deep appreciation to Georgia Hall, senior research scientist and director of the National Institute on Out of School Time, who has ably led the Wellesley Centers for Women during this period of transition. Her stewardship of the staff, scholars, and researchers has been marked by both wisdom and unwavering dedication, positioning WCW for its next chapter.
Please join us in welcoming Laura Mamo to Wellesley College.