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Overview | Our Staff | Location | Contact Us
Our StaffKathy Luneau Simons, M.S.
Manager, Work/Life and Child Care Initiatives
Together with Rae Simpson, Kathy has developed and coordinated a range of critical work/life services and initiatives for the MIT community, helping to bring national recognition to MIT and to the Center as leaders in the field. In recognition for their contributions to "fostering an inclusive workplace," Kathy and Rae were among the first recipients of the MIT Excellence Award.
As a specialist in child care and work/life strategies, Kathy established a comprehensive child care resource program for families at MIT and led the effort to expand and reorganize MIT’s child care centers, designing an innovative and state-of-the-art architectural program for MIT’s newest program at the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center, and establishing a unique partnership with Bright Horizons/Family Solutions to integrate and manage MIT’s child care system. Kathy also created a range of services to support flexible work practice at MIT, including training programs for employees and supervisors, and served on the team that developed MIT’s job flexibility guidelines.
Kathy has contributed to local and national efforts aimed at understanding and addressing the needs of children and working families, serving in leadership, research, and consulting roles. She is co-founder and served as president of the College and University Work/Family Association, and served as an advisor to the Families and Work Institute’s first national benchmarking study of college and university work/life programs. In collaboration with several early childhood colleagues, Kathy established an early childhood advisory committee at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Office for Children (now Department of Early Education and Care) and served as its first chairperson. As senior research associate, she contributed to an influential research report, Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action, authored by Rae Simpson and published with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Kathy sits on the Steering Committee of the New England Work/Family Association, part of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, and on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Children’s Investment Fund. She is a frequent speaker on employer child care and work/life strategies.
Kathy received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and M.S. from Wheelock College; she is an experienced preschool teacher and director, and has served as an early childhood instructor at Wheelock College, North Shore Community College, and Fisher Junior College.
A. Rae Simpson, Ph.D.
Program Director, Parenting Education and Research
Together with Kathy Simons, Rae co-directs the Center, where she develops and coordinates a range of critical work/life services and initiatives for the MIT community, helping to bring national recognition to MIT and to the Center as leaders in the field. Specializing in parenting issues, she is particularly known for her program of workshops, consultations, research reports, professional networks, and other resources in the parenting field.
As founder and chief consultant to the Harvard Parenting Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, with funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Rae wrote and published two widely circulated reports: Raising Teens: A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action and The Role of the Mass Media in Parenting Education, available at http://hrweb.mit.edu/worklife/rp_o.
Building on this work, Rae is currently directing a project to gather and disseminate key findings on young adult development, including brain development, highlighting the unique needs and characteristics of this age group and exploring implications for employers, parents, educators, university administrators, policymakers, health care and human service practitioners, and others.
Rae has consulted on issues in parenting education, parenting and the media, youth development, and science journalism to national and international organizations including the World Health Organization, CBS Television, National Science Foundation, the United Nations, public television, and major advertising, publishing, and law firms. She is founding chair of the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN), http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/npen/, a national professional organization for parenting education, as well as its regional counterpart, the Parenting Education Network of Massachusetts, http://www.altrue.net/site/penofmass/.
Rae received her Ph.D. in communication research from Stanford University and is the author (under her former name, Rae Goodell) of The Visible Scientists (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), which explores the relationship between experts and the media, as well as numerous articles in such publications as The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Washington Post.
Polly Smith
Administrator of Child Care Initiatives
Polly joined the Center for Work, Family and Personal Life in 2006 to serve as part of MIT’s work/life team, with a focus on MIT’s child care initiative.
Polly serves as MIT’s liaison with Bright Horizons to oversee the management of the four Technology Children’s Centers on campus and in Lexington. Polly works with Bright Horizons leadership and TCC Center Directors to support the delivery of quality child care programs that meet the needs of MIT families. Polly also manages the Child Care Scholarship Fund and serves as staff to the Council on Family and Work. Polly’s work is driven by a professional commitment to respectful, intentional, and emotionally responsive early learning experiences for children, meaningful support for families, and effective professional development for teachers.
Polly’s experiences in the field of education include teaching, teacher training and supervision, mentor teacher program development and leadership, assessment and evaluation, research, consultation and program administration. Before coming to MIT, she collaborated in the creation and management of the John Hancock Child Care Center, a highly regarded corporate child care center licensed for 200 children. As the administrator responsible for program development and teacher training for 60 teachers, Polly was the voice for best practice based on current thinking in the field. She launched a successful Mentor Teacher Program with other Boston area centers, provided leadership and training for the inclusion of Reggio Emilia inspired approaches to early childhood education, and instituted a Zero to Three program to enhance quality care for infants and toddlers. In her fifteen years at John Hancock, Polly continually sought opportunities to facilitate teachers’ engagement in the dynamic process of connecting theory to practice.
Polly holds both a Master of Education in Child Study and a Master of Arts in Applied Child Development from Tufts University. She has held adjunct faculty and student teacher supervisory positions at Wheelock College, Lesley College and Tufts University, served as Child Development Specialist for the Balancing Work and Family Project at the Wellesley Center for Research on Women, and has been a dedicated teacher of young children. Polly is also a past Director of Student Teacher Placements at Wheelock College, Director of the Wheaton College Annual Fund and Associate Director of the Tufts University Annual Fund.
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