Maureen “Mo” McGough is the co-founder of the 30×30 Initiative to advance women in policing and the Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Policing and Public Safety (EPPS) at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Previously, she served as Chief of Strategic Initiatives for the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law where she oversaw collaborative efforts to establish basic minimum standards for fair and effective policing. Mo joined the Policing Project from the National Policing Institute, where she led the non-profit’s training, and technical assistance efforts as Director of National Programs. Prior to joining the National Policing Institute, Maureen spent a decade with the federal government in various roles with the US Department of Justice and US Department of State. She served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Director of the National Institute of Justice – the USDOJ’s research, development, and evaluation agency – where she led agency efforts to advance evidence-based policing and implement systems-level criminal justice reform initiatives. Additional federal experience includes serving as counsel on terrorism prevention to the Deputy Attorney General, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and coordinator for federal AIDS relief efforts through the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda. Maureen is a member of the FBI’s Law Enforcement Education and Training Council, an executive board member for the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and is a recent public leadership executive fellow with the Brookings Institution. Maureen is an attorney and earned her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.
Presentation
Gender Diversity and the 30 x 30 project. A US perspective on advancing gender diversity in policing.
Chief (Ret.) Ivonne Roman and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Maureen McGough, joined forces to launch the 30×30 Initiative in March 2021 to improve the representation and experiences of women in policing. The initiative’s goals are simple:
- Understand how current policies and practices fail to meet women officers’ unique needs
- Understand how the status quo may be unintentionally biased against women and other underrepresented groups
- Work collaboratively with police departments to address these issues and ensure a truly diverse and inclusive workplace
The 30×30 team is confident that meeting these goals will lead to a significant increase in the hiring and retaining of women officers. Ultimately, the hope is to see women making up at least 30 percent of U.S. police recruit classes by the year 2030.1 In the last three years, 30×30 has partnered with almost 400 agencies to work toward these goals, from federal agencies like the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service and major metro departments like the New York City Police Department and the Los Angelos, California Police Department, to state, mid-sized, small, and university departments in the United States and Canada. In addition, the initiative has established formal collaboration with the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Justice. More than 1,000 sworn women officers have participated in focus groups and surveys, and 30×30 has collected hundreds of progress reports from agencies engaged in gender equity work. And, in many ways, the work is just getting started.