Marianne Cooper is a sociologist at Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. She is also an affiliate at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. She was the lead researcher for “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” by Sheryl Sandberg. She is a contributor to LeanIn.org, a contributing writer to The Atlantic, and a LinkedIn influencer. She is an author of the Lean In and McKinsey Women in the Workplace reports on the status of women in corporate America. Her book, “Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times,” examines how families are coping in an insecure age. She is an expert on gender, women’s leadership, diversity and inclusion, financial insecurity and economic inequality. Cooper regularly speaks, writes and consults on these topics for companies, media outlets and professional groups. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.