Haley Swenson is a research and writing fellow for the Better Life Lab.
Swenson was the deputy director of the Better Life Lab from 2020 to 2022. Swenson directed major research projects for the Lab, and led the team’s editorial and impact strategy. Swenson has also directed multiple reporting grants and story series, editing and writing pieces that have landed in the Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and at Slate.
Swenson is an expert on the relationship between gender inequality at work and gender inequality at home, as well as their intersections with racial and economic injustice. With Brigid Schulte, she helped to create, and manages BLLx, a behavioral-science informed tool for helping families better share the load at home.
After earning a BA from Vanderbilt University, Swenson earned an MA and a PhD in women's, gender, and sexuality studies from The Ohio State University. Her dissertation was titled Reproducing Inequality: Cooking, Cleaning, and Caring in the Austerity Age. Swenson came to New America in 2017 as an ACLS/Mellon Public Fellow.
Swenson and her family live in Southern Utah.