Kate Cooney

Kate Cooney is a Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise and Management at Yale School of Management. Her research explores the intersection of business and social sectors, focusing on social finance, inclusive economic development, and data visualization for the social sector. She teaches courses on community economic development and co-founded the Inclusive Economic Development Lab at Yale. Cooney also serves as a faculty affiliate for the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work emphasizes hybrid organizational models, community-engaged research, and equitable entrepreneurship.

Kate Cooney is a Senior Lecturer at Yale University School of Management, specializing in organizational studies, social enterprise, and urban economic development. Her research explores the institutional and technical structuring of nonprofit ventures, performance measurement in the human service sector, and market-based strategies for poverty alleviation. Cooney examines the institutionalization of new legal forms of social enterprise and the role of public policy in work integration social enterprises. Her work also investigates the social returns of nonprofits and the challenges of legitimizing social impact measurement tools like SROI. Through case studies and comparative analyses, she contributes to understanding how social purpose businesses navigate complex strategic action fields.