Taylor Willingham co-founded Texas Forums, an initiative of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in 2003. She teaches Change Management and Fund Development for the graduate library sciences programs at the University of Illinois, is a research associate for the Kettering Foundation and is a former board member for the National Issues Forums Institute.

She has been faculty at over forty National Issues Forums Public Policy Institutes and two International Deliberative Democracy Workshops, working with participants from countries like Croatia, Tajikistan, Russia, Colombia, and other emerging democracies. She has traveled to Russia three times conducting training sessions on the role of deliberative forums in democracy in Russia and recently conducted a four day workshop for government employees in Thailand.

Her current area of interest is in Civic and Social Entrepreneurship, the role of libraries in community, and social networking, technology, and web 2.0 applications to modern democracy and social movements.