Bickley Townsend
Senior Vice President, Research and Advisory Services
April 24, 1996

Bickley Townsend heads Catalyst's Research and Advisory Services division, which conducts studies on women's leadership development and helps organizations develop strategies to achieve business objectives related to women in the work force.

Ms. Townsend joined Catalyst as vice president of advisory services and continues to advise corporate policy planners, task forces and human resource professionals on issues such as women's career development, workplace flexibility and managing gender diversity in the work force. She has directed numerous internal company studies designed to enhance the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the context of business objectives. In addition, she supervised the preparation of Catalyst's 1993 report, Mentoring: A Guide to Corporate Programs and Practices, and is project leader for a current study on building diversity in management commissioned by the Food Marketing Institute, the supermarket industry association.

Prior to joining Catalyst, Ms. Townsend was vice president of the Roper Organization Inc., an international public opinion and marketing research company based in New York. At Roper, she provided customized research analysis and consulting to the firm's corporate clients. She also served as editor of Roper's monthly newsletter, The Public Pulse, and was an author of numerous published studies, including The 1990 Virginia Slims Women's Opinion Poll, The Prodigy Services Company Report on Women, and What the Consumer Wants, prepared for The Wall Street Journal.

Previously, Ms. Townsend was an executive at American Demographics, Inc., a Dow Jones company. She directed the American Demographics Institute, a business advisory service specializing in demographic analysis and trend forecasting for organizational policy and strategy. She was also a senior editor of American Demographics magazine and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing the "People Patterns" column. Ms. Townsend served as demographic and social change editor of Marketing Research magazine, a publication of the American Marketing Association, and continued to serve as a contributing editor of American Demographics until 1994.

A graduate of Smith College, Ms. Townsend holds a Ph.D. in regional planning and social demography from Cornell University. She is a frequent speaker before business and professional groups, and has presented testimony before Congress on demographic and social issues. She serves on Cornell's Human Resource Advisory Committee and the President's Council of Cornell Women.

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