Robyn Gulley

Executive Director and Board Chair 

Instructor–People's Leadership

Robyn Gulley grew up in a working class family–her dad drove a bus with MetroTransit and her mom taught dance. 

Robyn was fortunate to receive a scholarship (and plenty of student loans) to study politics at the College of Santa Fe. While in Santa Fe, she worked on a number of successful organizing campaigns including increasing the minimum wage. Robyn also did archival research on labor history, collecting source material on Colorado labor history, in particular the Ludlow massacre.

Robyn returned to Minnesota in 2003 and continued her work on labor and issue campaigns. She organized on LGBTQ rights, laying groundwork for the successful marriage campaign; she organized support for the Minnesota health care expansion, then organized homecare workers to unionize with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota; she organized support against a proposed constitutional amendment that would have disenfranchised thousands of voters. And Robyn was on the organizing committee of the University of Minnesota faculty union organizing campaign.

Along the way, Robyn earned a Masters in Public Policy and a Master of Arts in Human Rights; she sees education as a powerful tool for change. Robyn continues to fight for the working class and sees New Brookwood as one way to bring a new world into being. When she is not organizing or standing in front of a class, Robyn can be found with her husband and four kids who inspire her to keep fighting.

Email: skreb002@umn.edu