About me
Dr. Mary Gatta has over twenty years of teaching, research and advocacy experience working on issues of education, employment and retirement inequity in colleges and non-profit organizations. She currently is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network and serves as the Director of Research and Policy at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
Prior to joining NACE, Dr. Gatta served as an Associate Professor of Sociology at City University of New York-Guttman and Faculty Director of the Ethnographies of Work program. In addition, she was the Research Director at the Rutgers University Center for Women and Work and a Senior Scholar at Wider Opportunities for Women in Washington DC. Dr. Gatta also served on New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's Labor and Workforce Development Transition Team. Dr. Gatta's work is centered on evidence-based research analysis to develop new solutions to current problems, particularly around economic security, education and workforce policies. In all her research projects she uses an equity and intersectionality lens.
Over the years, she developed research on job quality, such as workplace flexibility for low-wage workers; workforce development programs and older workers. Her book Waiting on Retirement: Aging and Economic Insecurity in Low Wage Work, on the experiences of older low wage workers was released in October 2018.
Her latest book, Gentrification Down the Shore (with Molly Makris), explores the connection between jobs, racial inequality and seasonal gentrification and the experiences of longtime residents in the beach-community city of Asbury Park, NJ was released in November 2020. She has written three other books along with articles, policy papers, book chapters, and op-ed pieces. She currently has an advanced book contract with Rutgers University Press and is working on book on the challenges workers face when they are either sick or a caregiver focusing on both the employment and health care systems, and the need for a New Deal for Care in America.
In Florida, she serves as the Co-Public Policy Director for the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Florida. She has led research for the AAUW in Florida on older women's economic security across race and class. Through this work she wrote several reports including: Women, Economic Insecurity and Aging in the Florida Sunshine, Florida's Hispanic Women: Striving But Not Economically Thriving, and Working Black Women in Florida and Economic Insecurity: A Story of Gender and Racial Inequality, and "Women and Economic Insecurity In Sarasota County, Florida".
In addition, she worked on the national AAUW report Limiting Our Livelihoods: The Cumulative Impact of Sexual Harassment on Women's Careers. In addition, for the past several years, she has served on the AAUW Scholarship and Fellowship review panels. Dr. Gatta holds a bachelor's degree in Social Science from Providence College and a master's degree and doctorate in Sociology from Rutgers University.
