Mary Walshok, Ph.D., is an author, educator, researcher, and associate vice chancellor for public programs and dean of Extension at UC San Diego. She is the author of more than 100 articles and reports on aligning workforce development with regional economic growth, including: Creating Competitiveness: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policies for Growth (2013) Invention and Reinvention: The Evolution of San Diego’s Innovation Economy (2013), Public Universities and Regional Growth: Insights from the University of California (2014), and the Oxford Handbook of Local Competitiveness (2015). An industrial sociologist studying the dynamics of regional economic transformation, Walshok has researched various communities with support from the U.S. Department of Labor, the NSF, and the Lilly Endowments. She oversees a $50 million, 200-employee division that annually serves more than 65,000 enrollees through innovative local and online programs, including UCSD-TV and UCTV. She is the co-founder of CONNECT and currently serves on the boards of CONNECT, the United States—Mexico Foundation for Science, the La Jolla Playhouse and the Girard Foundation.
