Mary Kay Henry

Mary Kay Henry
Born	1958 (age 58–59) Wayne County, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Union organizer
Known for	President, Service Employees International Union

Mary Kay Henry (born 1958) is an American labor union activist who was elected International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on May 8, 2010. She is the first woman to lead the union. While serving with the union in California, she helped pioneer SEIU's use of card check agreements, non-traditional collective bargaining agreements, comprehensive campaigns, and system-wide health care organizing strategies.

Henry was born in 1958 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Her father was a salesman and her mother was a teacher, and both were devout Catholics.

Henry credits her faith with giving her an interest in social justice issues. The oldest girl in a family of 10 children, she attended Marian High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She gained a favorable impression of labor unions from hearing and reading about the work of the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the heavily-unionized automotive industry. She worked in a local hospital while in high school to earn money.

In college, Henry initially wanted to become an urban planner. She continued to work in hospitals as an undergraduate student, and also as a medical assistant for the American Red Cross. She earned her bachelor's degree from Michigan State University in 1979, majoring in urban planning and labor relations. While in college, she was a volunteer lobbyist for a grassroots group, and worked alongside union lobbyists on various issues. Her first job out of college was with the American Foreign Service distributing food stamps to the needy. When a member from the United Auto Workers suggested that the way to end hunger was to enable people to obtain well-paying jobs, Henry began considering union organizing.

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