Colleen Thouez
“How can community and subregional workforce development open real pathways from education to employment?”
Mehr über Colleen Thouez
Colleen Thouez has spent three decades connecting people across international, national, and local levels to create communities where newcomers and especially young people can succeed. A first-generation Canadian child of immigrants, she grew up in Montreal among the city’s Anglophone, Francophone, and Allophone communities. She earned a master’s degree in international relations at McGill University and a Ph.D. in international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Colleen Thouez spent seventeen years at the United Nations. From 2004 to 2010 she headed the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in New York, one of the youngest people appointed to a director-level post. From 2016 to 2018 she served as Special Adviser to Sir Peter Sutherland, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on International Migration. Convinced that local governments do not just carry out global policy but improve it, she went on to found the Mayors Migration Council and its Global Cities Fund for Pandemic Relief (2019) at the Open Society Foundations, winning cities a formal voice in UN migration talks.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she co-founded Europe Prykhystok. Its city-to-city partnerships have enabled more than 2,000 Ukrainian children to spend time away from the war, with host families in France, Germany, and Poland. Colleen Thouez is also a founding advisory board member of the Global Centre for Climate Mobility. Since 2021 she has served as Vice President for Workforce Development at the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH), the largest association of public universities in the United States, which represents 1,200 campuses and 13.9 million students. She has held academic appointments at Sciences Po Paris, Columbia University, American University, Duke University, The New School, and Bard College.
As a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow, Thouez is examined how community and regional workforce development can advance economic and social mobility and help bridge societal divisions to serve economic and social goals.
Lebenslauf
2022 Co-founder, with Benjamin Abtan, and Chairwoman of advisory council, Europe Prykhystok, established to bring war-affected Ukrainian children to France and Germany
since 2021 Vice President for Workforce Development, National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH), representing 90 public university systems, 1,200 campuses, and 13.9 million students
2018–2021 Inaugural Director, Welcoming and Inclusive Cities division, Open Society Foundations (OSF), New York
2016–2018 Special Adviser to Sir Peter Sutherland, UN Special Representative for International Migration
2010–2019 Founder, Mayors Mechanism at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD); Founder and Director, Mayors Migration Council (MMC), and the Global Cities Fund for Pandemic Relief
2004–2010 Director, UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), New York
2003–2004 Senior policy adviser and deputy policy director, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva, created by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
1999–2002 Policy work on asylum with UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Geneva
1999 Ph.D. in international law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
1995 M.A. in International Relations, McGill University, Montreal
1994 B.A. in Political Science, McGill University, Montreal; Certification en relations internationales, Aix-Marseille III
1971 Born in Quebec, Canada
Colleen Thouez's Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Fellowship
From Education to Employment: Building Mobility, Bridging Divides
As a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow, Colleen Thouez focused on the transition from education to employment. Comparing US and German approaches, she asked how societies prepare people for work, and how that preparation can advance economic and social goals and strengthen democracy.
Building pathways from education to employment
As Vice President for Workforce Development at the National Association of Higher Education Systems (NASH) – the largest association of public universities in the United States, which educates three-quarters of the country’s students – Colleen Thouez helps to design, launch, and scale education-to-employment programs that advance economic and social mobility for students and adult learners. During her fellowship, she engaged with centers of excellence in workforce development across Germany to deepen her practical understanding of how to support workforce development at community and subregional levels. Her insights drew on her expertise in higher education, human mobility, and years of collaboration with local partners on coordinated, people-centered initiatives.
Bridging divisions to reach shared goals
The future of work and employment, Colleen Thouez argues, is of fundamental interest to the polity. It touches almost everyone, and it cuts across societal lines that otherwise divide people. Building on this, she used her time at the Academy to examine how divisions in political discourse can be bridged to advance shared economic and social goals, locally and nationally. Connecting international, national, and subnational actors and translating strategic goals from the macro level to the local level is an approach that runs through her whole career. Workforce development in communities, she suggests, is one of the issues on which even divided societies can find common ground.
