Kelly LeRoux

Kelly LeRoux is a Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Urban Planning & Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her work on nonprofits, contracting, local public service delivery, and intergovernmental collaboration has been published in the top public administration, policy, urban/local government, and nonprofit management journals. She is the author of Performance and Public Value in the Hollow State: Assessing Government-Nonprofit Partnerships by E-Elgar (with Nathaniel Wright) and Nonprofits Organizations and Civil Society in the U.S. by Routledge (with Mary Feeney), and Service Contracting: A Local Government Guide by ICMA Press. She holds MSW, MPA, and PhD in Political Science degrees from Wayne State University. Prior to beginning an academic career, she worked for twelve years in the mental health, child welfare, and housing policy arenas, within a large government-funded nonprofit. Practitioner experience includes both clinical social work practice with children, adults, and families, and several administrative leadership roles. Her current research projects use field experiments to examine nonprofits’ impact on increasing turnout among underrepresented groups, increasing turnout in municipal and primary elections, and nonprofits in local service delivery. She is a member of the Networks & Governance Lab at UIC, and co-founder of the GOTVLab, a get-out-the-vote capacity-building initiativ