Laura Dresser (MSW, PhD, University of Michigan; BA, Rice University) is associate director of COWS. A labor economist and expert on low-wage work and workforce development systems, she has both written about ways to build stronger labor market systems and worked extensively with labor, business, and community leaders in building them. Dresser has written about low-wage jobs, care work, inequality, and labor market reform. A co-editor of The Gloves-Off Economy: Workplace Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market, she is currently working on the connections between quality care, quality jobs, and minimum wages.

In 2017, Laura Dresser joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work as an assistant clinical professor.