Kathy Quick is the Gross Family Chair and an Associate Professor of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, an Academic Co-Director of the University-wide Center for Integrative Leadership, and a State Specialist in Leadership and Civic Engagement with University of Minnesota Extension.

Dr. Quick’s focus is bringing together people with diverse perspectives to work on high-stakes, complex, and often contentious public policy problems. Since 2016, she has centered her work on how different people define and experience public safety. Her research has included collaborating with tribal governments on roadway safety in reservations, partnering with government and nonprofit organizations to improve community relationships with police and other first responders, co-editing a special issue of Public Management Review on what public management can learn from studies of policing, and co-founding an international study group on policing.

Dr. Quick utilizes ethnographic research methods to identify practices and processes that improve or impede equity and inclusion. By studying practitioners doing their work, she gleans insights to share with graduate students and community partners working to build their civic engagement skills and strengthen democracy. She also continually hones her own craft by practicing what she studies and teaches, for example by facilitating the Falcon Heights Task Force on Policing and Inclusion and co-chairing the University of Minnesota's MSafe Committee on campus safety.

Originally from rural Pennsylvania, Dr. Quick worked for eight years as an environmental advocate and policy analyst with nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms in Indonesia and then for six years as a community development manager for the City of Alameda and the City of Garden Grove.  She holds a PhD in Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of California, Irvine, which recognized Dr. Quick as one of their top 50 graduate student alumni from the first 50 years of the university.

Public management; policy and program implementation; urban and regional planning; civic engagement and public participation; collaborative governance; local government