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Mary M. Lassen
Mary M. Lassen
Managing Director
Mary Lassen is
Managing Director of the Center for Community Change. Prior to her appointment
as Managing Director in March 2008, Ms. Lassen served as Board Chair for the
Center for Community Change. She also worked as a consultant to organizations
facing significant reorganization and leadership change. Her clients included
the Children’s Defense Fund and National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Ms. Lassen served as President and CEO of The Women’s Union from 1994-2005. She led the Boston-based Women’s Union during a period which has featured a strategic repositioning, including the development of a bold strategic plan which emphasizes women’s economic self-sufficiency, the creation of a strong public policy and advocacy capacity, and the development of a technology training and mentoring program for women. In 2006, Mary Lassen was a Senior Fellow at the Boston Foundation, focusing on issues of workforce development and higher education.
After distinguished work in community organizing, Ms. Lassen served from 1984-1993 as Executive Director of the Committee for Boston Public Housing, an organization which piloted early childhood, anti-violence and community building programs in several of Boston’s public housing developments. During 1993-94, she researched promising models of family support and community empowerment programs in public housing settings as a Fellow at the Mary I. Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Harvard University and a featured speaker on such topics as women’s economic security, family support initiatives, and strategic positioning for organizations.
Ms. Lassen currently serves on the OMB Watch Board and the Washington Area Advisory Council for Women’s Economic Security Coalition.
Among other publications she is the author of:
Massachusetts Community Colleges: The Potential for Improving College Attainment, The Boston Foundation (February 2007).
“A Promising Dilemma: Reflections on the Status of Japanese Women in the Year 2002” for Japan Society of New York (October 2002).
Community-Based Family Support in Public Housing, Harvard Family Research Project, Graduate School of Education (1995).
With Dr. Clifford Janey, “The Challenge of Collaboration: A Public School and a Public Housing Development Create an Early Education Center in Boston” in Equity and Choice, Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 1991.
