Elizabeth Babcock

Elisabeth Babcock (Beth) is the President and CEO of the Crittenton Women’s Union (CWU), a Boston-based charitable organization dedicated to creating new pathways to economic independence for low-income women and their families. CWU uses its unique “action-tank” business model to provide cutting-edge economic mobility, housing, education, and job-readiness programs, combined with anti-poverty research, and public advocacy. Beth’s role as CEO is to lead CWU in its strategy to be a research and innovations powerhouse consistently delivering new programmatic and public policy approaches that expedite pathways out of poverty.

CWU’s applied research led to the development of its groundbreaking Mobility Mentoring TM platform. Since its release in 2009, Mobility Mentoring has been nationally and internationally recognized for creating significantly improved outcomes in earnings, educational attainment, and family stability in extremely low-income families. Government has advanced application of the model in TAFDC, Housing, and Early Intervention settings, and a community of practice has developed to share the Mobility Mentoring practices around the world.

Beth received her Master’s Degree in City and Regional Planning from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and her Ph.D. in non-profit strategy from Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She has taught non-profit strategy and implementation at the graduate level for more than two decades at Harvard University, Brandeis University, and the New England Conservatory of Music.

She has received numerous awards including the World of Difference Award by the International Alliance for Women for her work promoting women’s economic empowerment; Woman of Influence by the Boston Business Journal; and her most recent publication, “Rethinking Poverty”, published in the fall 2104 Stanford Social Innovation Review, was named one of its top articles of the year.