Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has served with distinction in both the private and public arenas including in areas as diverse as crime, faith, finance, workforce development, women’s rights, service.
She was Maryland’s first woman Lt Governor where she developed the Hot Spots initiative which reduced crime 33% in three years in the highest crime communities. As Lt Gov she Chaired HIDTA, (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas) Task Force, The Office of Crime Control and Prevention, The Governor’s Office of Workforce Development, the Governor’s Office of Children, Youth and Families, and the Task Force on Drug Treatment. Among her many initiatives, she led the effort to require all state employees to take domestic violence training, launched Character Education in public schools, and initiated micro finance lending.
She also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States where helped organize the training of 100,000 community police officers and the initiation of the Police Corps
After her term as Lt Governor, she focused on finance and became a Managing Director of Rock Creek, one of the largest women owned asset management firm in the US, with states, foundation, unions and corporate pension funds for clients.
That experience led her to see the need for retirement reform as half of all Americans had nothing saved for Retirement. She Chaired the Marland Task Force on Retirement which led to the creation of Maryland Saves, and Co-founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives at Georgetown to help states enact auto-IRA legislation. When the Center opened not a single state has passed that legislation. Now 18 states have enacted retirement reform. As the Secretary’s Representative on Pensions and Retirement at the Labor under President Biden, she led the retirement reform campaign for Secretary Marty Walsh.
She has been a Special Advisor at the Department of State under Secretary Hillary Clinton, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, taught foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland and has been a visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
In the mid-1980s, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award which honored Lech Walesa, Bishop Tuto and Co-Madres from El Salvador among many others.
She Chaired the Institute of Human Virology founded by Dr. Robert Gallo, which treats over one million patients in Africa as part of the PEPFAR program, Chaired the Global Virus Network, Chaired the Robert Kennedy Memorial, Chaired the Innovation in Government Awards, at the Kennedy School, Harvard University and served on the Board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.
She was the Vice-Chair of the Future of Science conference held in Venice Italy for over a decade which was part of the effort to make stem cell acceptable in Italy.
An honors graduate of Harvard University, Ms. Townsend received her law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review. She has received fourteen honorary degrees. Ms. Townsend’s book, Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Mixed God with Politics and Lost Their Way has been published by Warner Books in March 2007.
Ms. Townsend is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue
She Co-Chaired the Board of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. She has served on a number of boards including the Export-Import Bank, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Wilderness Society, YMCA, the Points of Light Foundation, the National Catholic Reporter and the Women’s Policy Research, the Baltimore Urban League, Sheppard Pratt Health System Pension Rights Center, Center for American Progress, Why We Vac, Lightbridge, Can Alaska. She Chaired the Center for Popular Democracy.
