Gloria Cross Mwase

Program Director, Building Economic Opportunity

Contact Gloria Cross Mwase

Gloria Cross Mwase’s work centers on helping low-skilled adults advance to family-sustaining careers, while enabling employers to build and sustain a productive workforce. Her projects include Breaking Through, enabling adults with less-than-8th-grade skills to prepare for and succeed in community college technical programs; and Accelerate TEXAS, combining basic skills and career training for lower-skilled adults. She also leads the capacity-building and peer-learning efforts of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which supports local funding collaboratives investing in workforce partnerships that recruit, train, place, retain, and advance new and incumbent workers in key industry sectors.

Dr. Mwase brings a decade of experience managing projects in the nonprofit sector. Her publications include studies that explore the role of community-based organizations in employment training and economic development, as well as an analysis of state policies affecting remedial instruction for adults.

Before coming to JFF, Dr. Mwase was a local representative for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where she served on the Funders Group of SkillWorks, a workforce intermediary in Boston that is now part of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.

Dr. Mwase has taught at Cambridge College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She earned a B.A. in economics from Tougaloo College and both an M.S. and Ph.D in public policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.