Mary Jo Dudley is the Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program and a faculty member in Cornell University’s Department of Global Development. As director of the Program her work focuses on improving the living and working conditions of farmworkers and their families. The program conducts research with farmworkers to examine their perspectives on their workplaces, community life and their goals for the future. This research provides guidance for the development of materials and activities (primarily workshops and short animated videos) that address farmworker interests in topics related to health, workplace safety and well-being, cultural, and immigration issues. Mary Jo’s research on improving workplace relations engages farmers and farmworkers in discussions of workplace communication challenges and a joint exploration of strategies to improve the wellbeing of farmworkers

Mary Jo is the Chair of the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health, a 15-member council that provides Secretary Becerra of the US Department of Health Resources and Services Administration with recommendations to improve the health and well-being of farmworkers and their families. In 2019, she received the W.K.Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Awards Regional award and the C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award, a national distinction for engaged scholarship. She is also a member of the Finger Lakes Community Health Board of Directors and the chair of its Farmworker Committee. She is also a member of the New York State Ag Labor Advisory Council convened by the NYS Department of Labor and the NYS Department of Ag and Markets. In 2015 Mary Jo was selected as the George D. Levy Engaged Teaching and Research Awardee, a prestigeous award given to a Cornell faculty member each year, and in 2013 she was selected as a Cornell Engaged Learning and Research Faculty Fellow. Her work is recognized at the national level as well and in 2012 she was awarded by President Obama the 2012 White House Champion of Change Cesar Chavez Legacy Award. In 2010 she received the James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony, and the Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Service-Learning Award, both from Cornell University.

Her recent publications include: “Thinking across agrarian class hierarchies in guest worker programs: Limitations to worker and farmer collective strategies”. (Human Geography), “Protracted Dependence and Unstable Relations: Agrarian Questions in the H-2A Visa Program,” (Journal of Rural Studies), “National Food Security, Immigration Reform, and the Importance of Worker Engagement in Agricultural Guestworker Debates,” (Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development) and. “Reaching Invisible and Unprotected Workers on Farms during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” (Journal of Agromedicine).