Program Themes

Recognizing the particular challenges faced by marginalized populations in this era of globalization, the McKenna Center has decided to focus on three core themes as the core of its work. These themes while each distinctly intersect in their focus on the interests, well-being, and advancement of working people and poor communities. 

• Entrepreneurship. Through both research and community engagement, the McKenna Center will seek to explore the challenges faced by aspiring entrepreneurs from poor and marginalized communities. Entrepreneurship among the poor is under-researched and yet critical to understanding how poor communities may find the economic tools and means to escape cycles of persistent poverty.
• Future of Work. The offshoring of high-wage jobs and the rapid automation of more routine tasks for both blue and white-collar workers is creating considerable disruption, anxiety, and despair in the labor markets of both industrialized and emerging market nations. Tracking these trends and beginning to identify the nature of work in post-industrial societies will be needed to guide policymakers through what will certainly be decades of tumultuous social transition. 
• Global Supply Chain Performance. In this era of accelerating globalization, markets are shaping the opportunity horizon for nations and working people across the globe. Global supply chains are the front lines of the globalization process. The way these supply chains are designed, implemented, and governed have major impacts on the lives and livelihoods of billions of workers across the world.  The McKenna Center will focus its work on studying the performance and impacts, both positive and negative, of supply chains in delivering real value to poor nations and working families across the world.