Kathie Kane-Willis is a multiple-award winning public policy researcher with more than 20 years of policy research and successfully advancing advocacy campaigns. In 2016 Kathie joined the Chicago Urban League and serves as the Director of Research. Prior to joining the League, Kathie co-founded the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy, a public policy research institute at Roosevelt University in order to foster a public health approach to drug use and drug policy, where she served as director for more than a decade. Kathie’s accomplishments during that time included advancing and implementing harm reduction policy solutions to the heroin and opioid crisis, including Good Samaritan immunity laws and naloxone access laws in the Midwest. . Today Kathie’s work focuses on a broader range of social justice issues at the intersection of race, including criminal justice reform, health, economic justice and democracy.
