Ideas Made to Matter
What’s behind Amazon’s wage hike?
The retail and warehousing giant raised its minimum pay to $15 per hour.
Faculty
Barbara Dyer is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Executive Director of the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan School. Dyer focuses her attention at the intersection of people, profit, and technology. As Executive Director of the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative within Sloan’s Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER), Dyer is working to facilitate the cross-fertilization of ideas about making work work for everyone in the 21st century.
Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Dyer was president and CEO of The Hitachi Foundation. Under her leadership, the Foundation was an influential force in bringing focus to the role of business in society. She was instrumental in shaping major national collaborative philanthropic initiatives that received high honors proffered by the Council on Foundations, including the Critical Impact and the Distinguished Grantmaker awards.
Dyer’s extensive career in public policy included serving as special assistant to the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior; director of policy studies with the Council of Governors’ Policy Advisors; an affiliate of the National Governors’ Association; deputy executive director of the Western Regional Office of the Council of State Governments; and founding director of the National Academy of Public Administration’s Alliance for Redesigning Government. Earlier in her career she served as executive director of a community nonprofit organization in Alameda County, California, and helped to launch an experimental school within a public high school as a teacher in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Dyer has been a trustee of Clark University and was a member the American University School of Public Affairs Dean’s Advisory Council. She also cofounded and was the first chair of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. She is a graduate of Clark University and the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government.
Dyer, Barbara. Did You Feel the Ground Shake on July 22?. July 2014.
Dyer, Barbara and Devin Thorpe. Forbes, May 2014.
Dyer, Barbara. Entrepreneurs and Investors at the Intersection of People & Profit. April 2014.
Dyer, Barbara, Robert P. Giloth, Richard Kazis, and Marlene Seltzer. In Connecting People to Work: Workforce Intermediaries and Sector Strategies, 87-112. New York, NY: The Aspen Institute, 2014.
Dyer, Barbara. Great Companies, Great Jobs. April 2014.
Dyer, Barbara. The Hitachi Foundation, April 2014.
The retail and warehousing giant raised its minimum pay to $15 per hour.
USA Lab is available to MIT Sloan students and graduate students from across the broader MIT campus.
Source: The Hill (Opinion Piece)
By focusing on improving Americans' experiences on the job, a Biden administration can make the workplace a channel for healing a divided nation.
Source: Boston Review
"...we are seeing in many of our students a new determination to help shape a fairer, more equitable, and sustainable business world.”
Source: The Hill (Opinion Piece)
Dyer and Kochan write: “ We need to commit to protecting and caring for essential workers and their families in both the short and the long run."
Source: The Aspen Institute (Opinion Piece)
MIT Sloan's Barbara Dyer & Thomas Kochan: "We have only begun to see the devastating effects of COVID-19 on people's lives and livelihoods."