Pat Greenfield

Hometown  —  South Hadley, Massachusetts

Pat Greenfield began her career as a legal aid lawyer in Chicago, where she became involved in her union. After completing a doctorate in industrial relations at Cornell, she spent the next 30 years in academic and labor-related teaching and administration, first at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C., and then with the National Labor College, an accredited Maryland institution that provided liberal arts degree programs accessible to full-time working people. Now semi-retired and back in Western Massachusetts, Pat has the luxury of being able to hang out at bookstores and write something other than academic journal articles. She currently teaches classes at UMass and works nationally with labor-management programs to support pathways for youth and adult community members into transit industry careers that also provide ongoing opportunities for workers to obtain college degrees.