Jennifer E. Swanberg, Ph.D., is the executive director and founder of the Institute for Workplace Innovation (iWin) at the University of Kentucky, an associate professor in the UK College of Social Work with joint appointments in the Colleges of Medicine and Public Healt. Dr. Swanberg is also a faculty affiliate at UK’s UK Center on Poverty Research and the Center for the Advancement of Women’s Health, and a Research Fellow of the Boston College Work & Family Roundtable. 

Her research has focused on quality workplaces as a business and work-life effectiveness strategy, access to workplace flexibility among under-represented working populations, and the use of human capital and quality employment as a form of economic development. Dr. Swanberg is the co-principal investigator of a Ford Foundation-funded study examining the effects of quality work environments on business outcomes and employee health among hourly workers. She is also a research investigator at Boston College’s Center on Aging, Work & Workplace Flexibility, where she is the co-principal investigator of a study focusing on flexible work arrangements for older workers.

Dr. Swanberg’s research has been published in top research journals, and she has appeared as a national and international work-family expert on television and radio including MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, BBC and CBC. She has been recognized by Alliance of Work-Life Progress as one of the profession’s Rising Stars, and her research has been selected as one of the top 10 research articles by the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. Dr. Swanberg also writes a work-life column for Business Lexington, one of Kentucky’s premiere business publications.

Prior to coming to the University of Kentucky, Dr. Swanberg worked as a research associate at the National Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and at the Families and Work Institute (FWI) in New York City. While at FWI, she co-authored The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. Dr. Swanberg serves on the boards of Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, and the University of Kentucky Center on Poverty Research.