Program Schedule
View the 2024 NLSWRC program schedule, plenary and workshop descriptions, and speaker biographies below.
2024 NLSWRC Program Schedule
Friday, October 18th, 2024
| 11am - 6pm | 2024 NLSWRC Registration & Check In |
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MCC Front Desk Foyer
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| 12noon - 1pm | 2024 Fellows Lunch *open to 2024 Fellow only* |
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Chesapeake Dining Room
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| 1:30pm - 3pm | 2024 Fellows Wrap Up Session *open to 2024 Fellow only* |
| 5pm - 6:30pm | Open Dinner |
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Chesapeake Dining Room
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| 6pm - 7:30pm | PBF Community Cocktails & Desert Reception |
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Auditorium Foyer
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| 7:15pm | 2024 NLSWRC Opening Remarks | Rich J. Brean, Joe Lurie & Rachel Del Rossi |
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Auditorium
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| 7:30pm - 8:45pm | Friday Night Plenary | Patience, Persistence, and a Plan – USW’s Victory at Blue Bird | Chris Salm, Alex Perkins, Patrick Watkins, moderated by Antonia Domingo |
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Saturday, October 19th, 2024
| 7am - 8:30am | Open Breakfast |
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Chesapeake Dining Room
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| 7:45am - 8:30am | Saturday Only Registration |
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MCC Front Desk Foyer
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| 8am - all day | Employers & Allies Tables |
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Classrooms Foyer
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| 8:30am - 9:20am | Saturday Plenary: Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor | Kim Kelly |
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Auditorium
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| 9:20am - 9:30am | Break |
| 9:30am - 10:45am | Workshop Session 1 - MCC Classrooms |
| Intro to Basic Labor Law | Jay Smith & Lucus Aubrey | Classroom 2 | |
| Protecting and Organizing Immigrant Workers | Ingrid Nava & Victoria Bruno | Classroom 1 | |
| Intro to Public Sector Labor Law | Michael Artz | A303 | |
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Employee Benefits Law | Paul T. Esposito | A304 |
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Honors Attorney Programs at the U.S. DOL and the NLRB | Heide Hernandez-Jimenez, Meredith Jason, |
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Getting in the Door: Paths to Starting Your Labor Career | Alex Roe, David Jury & Danielle Leonard | A100 |
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| 11am - 12:15pm | Workshop Session 2 - MCC Classrooms |
| Intro to Basic Labor Law | Jay Smith & Lucus Aubrey | Classroom 2 | |
| Protecting and Organizing Immigrant Workers | Ingrid Nava & Victoria Bruno | Classroom 1 | |
| Intro to Public Sector Labor Law | Michael Artz | A303 | |
| Employee Benefits Law | Paul T. Esposito | A304 | |
| Honors Attorney Programs at the U.S. DOL and the NLRB | Heide Hernandez-Jimenez, Meredith Jason, Julie Pittman, Sejal Singh & Nicole Steinberg | A302 |
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| Lawyers of Color in the Movement | Matt Fernandes, Tiffany Wang, Michelle Fujii, Isabel Oraha & Jorge Salles-Diaz | A100 | |
| 12:15pm - 1:30pm | Lunch Break |
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Chesapeake Dining Room
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| 1:30pm - 2:45pm | Saturday Afternoon Plenary | From Loper Bright to Jarkesy to Space X: Attacks on the Administrative State and Labor Law Enforcement |
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Auditorium
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| 3pm - 4:15pm | Workshop Session 3 - MCC Classrooms |
| Organizers and Lawyers: Working Together | Nick Gleichman, Geoffrey Leonard, Molly Baker Ragan | Classroom 2 | |
| The Labor Movement’s Role in Fostering and Protecting Democracy | Danielle Leonard | A100 | |
| Lawyers of Color in the Movement | Matt Fernandes, Tiffany Wang, Michelle Fujii, Isabel Oraha & Jorge Salles-Diaz | Classroom 1 | |
| Getting in the Door: Paths to Starting your Labor Career | Alex Roe & David Jury | Auditorium | |
| Trade & Labor Law | Marley Weiss | A302 | |
| Sports Law | Erin Drake & Juhyung Harold Lee | A304 | |
| 4:30pm | 2024 NLSWRC Closing Remarks |
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Auditorium
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Plenary & Workshop Descriptions
Friday Night Plenary | Patience, Persistence, and a Plan – USW’s Victory at Blue Bird
Panelists: Chris Salm, Alex Perkins, Patrick Watkins & Antonia Domingo (Moderator)
Workers seeking to organize a union face many hurdles, and particularly in the American South. Blue Bird Corp. has assembled school busses in Fort Valley, Georgia since 1927 and today builds the low-emission and zero-emission models that power America’s clean energy future. Once considered a good place to work, Blue Bird became a company viewed by its workers as having “forgotten about the people.”
A small group of workers reached out to the United Steelworkers and that spark grew into a massive NLRB election win in May 2023. Blue Bird workers elected a bargaining committee and, one year later in May 2024, 1,500 new Steelworkers members ratified a first contract that provided all workers with at least 12% in raises, with some of the lowest paid seeing increases of more than 40%. The contract also established a defined contribution pension plan and platforms to address concerns regarding civil rights, health insurance costs, public policy, the creation of new jobs, and more.
President Biden, Georgia’s Senators, and others have praised Blue Bird’s workers for their victory. The win at Blue Bird shows that successful organizing requires patience, persistence, and a plan.
Saturday Morning Plenary | Fight Like Hell:The Untold History of American Labor
Speaker: Kim Kelly
The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased from the history of workplace justice and the fight for workers' rights over time as the privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. Hear their stories, successes, and challenges, and how lessons from the past can be applied to our current fight for the future of the labor movement.
Saturday Afternoon Plenary | From Loper Bright to Jarkesy to Space X: Attacks on the Administrative State and Labor Law Enforcement
Recent Supreme Court decisions have empowered employers and other entities to inhibit federal agencies' enforcement of the statutes under their remit. Hear from panelists about the constitutional arguments being raised by those seeking to dismantle the infrastructure workers have relied on for decades to administer the NLRA and other federal laws.
Workshops
Intro to Basic Labor Law | This workshop covers an overview of the basic concepts of labor law, focusing on the National Labor Relations Act, its primary purposes, its structure, and its administration by the National Labor Relations Board, with a little bit of labor law history thrown in for good measure. Also covered briefly is the labor arbitration system and its enforcement in federal courts.
Intro to Public Sector Labor Law | Public sector workers, employed by the federal government, cities, towns, school boards, states and other public entities, work under a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction legal system that offers twists and turns not always found in the private sector. This workshop provides an overview of public sector labor law and how it differs from private sector law; discuss the types of attacks that conservative legislatures and governors have undertaken against public sector unions; and highlight the new and creative ways of organizing in the public sphere.
Employee Benefits Law | Employee benefits, including health care, retirement benefits, training, and more, are of paramount importance to workers. Every day, issues regarding employee benefits are in the news and at the bargaining table. Yet many law schools offer little to no coursework in employee benefits law and students committed to workers’ rights may not have the opportunity to learn about these issues and this area of law. In addition, there are many union-side law firms and union-sponsored benefits looking for dedicated employee benefit lawyers, and there is a limited pool of candidates looking for jobs as union-side employee benefit lawyers or other legal jobs protecting workers’ benefits. In this workshop we will provide a basic overview of the Taft-Hartley Act rules for labor-management employee benefit plans, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and related laws. We will also provide information about what kinds of work the lawyers in this practice area actually do, and the types of careers a student could pursue in employee benefits law.
Sports Law | Lawyers for professional sports unions deal not only with issues specific to their sports, but also with bread-and-butter labor law matters like collective bargaining, grievances, and discipline, as well as with topics that cut across legal disciplines, such as antitrust and intellectual property. And in light of the heightened visibility of unions representing professional athletes in particular, they often have unique opportunities to speak and take action regarding matters of pressing social and political importance, such as anti-blackness, reproductive rights, the COVID-19 pandemic, police violence, and more. This workshop will discuss what it is like to represent professional sports unions and how lawyers who represent such unions see their work within the broader labor movement.
Lawyers of Color in the Movement | In 2023, the ABA released shocking demographic information that revealed the American legal profession is disproportionately white. Due to various socioeconomic pressures, this disparity is even more present in the various fields of public interest law, including labor and employment. This workshop will feature a panel of young attorneys of color in the labor and employment field, all of whom were recent Peggy Browning Fellows themselves. At this workshop, the panelists will discuss the importance of attorneys of color in the labor movement, their own paths to becoming legal advocates for workers’ rights, and how they handle(d) various barriers and issues unique to being a person of color in a predominantly white profession. The goals of this workshop are to share information and resources; to create a space for law students of color to feel seen and welcomed; and, most importantly, to encourage these Fellows to stay the course and continue to push the labor movement forward.
Honors Attorney Programs at the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board | The Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and other government agencies play a critical role in enforcing workers’ rights, advancing worker protection, and building worker power. This workshop will introduce the Department of Labor and the National Relations Board's work, government attorneys' role in advancing each agency's mission, and highlights from panelists' enforcement, regulatory, appellate, and policy work. It will then cover basic information about careers and opportunities, with a special focus on the Honors Programs for graduating students and early-career attorneys.
Protecting and Organizing Immigrant Workers | The labor movement and the fight for workers’ rights now more than ever revolve around immigrants’ rights. At the same time, the effort to protect the rights of immigrants frequently depends upon workplace and labor organizing. This workshop will give an overview of the challenges that immigrant workers face when they attempt to form a union or enforce other workplace rights. The workshop will also discuss legal, policy, legislative and grassroots strategies for overcoming those challenges.
The Labor Movement’s Role in Fostering and Protecting Democracy | Protecting democracy has never been more important than it is right now. You will hear how labor unions, as democratic, membership-based institutions, are well positioned to encourage and engender greater civic involvement; how labor lawyers have been at the frontlines of litigation and other efforts to protect the right to vote; and what opportunities still exist for future labor lawyers such as yourselves to get involved in efforts to turnout and protect the right to vote and our democracy in the upcoming 2024 election.
Getting in the Door: Paths to Starting Your Labor Career | Finding your way to a career representing labor unions can be daunting because positions do not open on a regular schedule and the type of work involved from one position to another can vary widely. As a result, law students may be unnerved by the unpredictability of the union lawyer career path. However, there are steps students can take to increase their chances of finding a position where they are likely to thrive. Hear from panelists who have traveled this road and have since found themselves on the other side of the hiring process. You will receive job search and resume building tips as well as reassurance as you look toward graduation and beyond.
Trade & Labor Law | For decades, the labor movement has fought the dominant, neoliberal model of free trade. Trade has put workers into labor cost competition around the globe. A disproportionate share of off-shored American manufacturing jobs have been those of racial minorities, as well as unionized workplaces. Regulatory competition, both international and domestic (among American states), has caused U.S. workers’ real wages and working conditions to stagnate or decline, while enforcement of labor standards has been undermined. Off-shoring of bargaining unit work and resultant plant closings has caused a precipitous drop in private sector union representation. Race-baiting and anti-immigrant demagoguery have been deployed to pit workers against each other, within countries and across national boundaries. This workshop will examine prior and current trade agreement models and other trade-related mechanisms, taking into account race and class-based effects on workers, unions, and labor rights. It also will focus on new trade-related and supply chain initiatives for implementing workers’ rights around the world. These new developments aim to turn the negative impact of trade toward positive uses of trade leverage on behalf of working people of all races, nationalities and identities.
Workshops will be held in the MCC Classrooms space.
Michael Artz | Michael Artz is an Associate General Counsel at the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Throughout his legal career he has represented labor unions, health and pension funds and individuals before courts, administrative agencies and arbitrators. He also developed, planned, implemented and supervised Presidential election voter protection programs in Virginia and Nevada. He received his undergraduate degree from Miami University (Ohio) and graduated cum laude from American University’s Washington College of Law, where he also teaches legal rhetoric and writing as a law professor. He clerked for the Honorable Stephanie Duncan-Peters in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, then served as a legal fellow for the Service Employees International Union and as an associate attorney at Mooney, Green, Baker & Saindon in Washington, D.C. He was a Peggy Browning Fellow in 2000 and currently serves as the Vice-Chair and Secretary for the Peggy Browning Fund's Board of Directors.
Lucas Aubrey | A partner at Sherman Dunn, P.C., Lucas Aubrey has significant experience assisting clients under the National Labor Relations Act, the Railway Labor Act, and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. He regularly counsels the firm’s clients on collective bargaining negotiations, organizing campaigns, and internal union affairs. Lucas has litigated cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts, and before the National Labor Relations Board and other federal and state administrative agencies. A graduate of the Columbus School of Law, Lucas also serves on the Board of Directors of the Peggy Browning Fund.
Richard J. Brean | Since graduating from Harvard Law School, Richard Brean spent his entire career in the Legal Department of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh. During his first ten years in the Legal Department, he maintained a general labor practice. Starting in 1988, he devoted the bulk of his practice to NLRB litigation involving unfair labor practice strikes and unlawful lockouts. From 2009 to 2018, Mr. Brean served as USW General Counsel. He also supervised litigation performed by “the Steelworker family” of outside law firms. A long-time member of the Peggy Browning Fund’s Board of Directors, he was elected Chair in 2015. Mr. Brean is passionate about encouraging law students to pursue careers in public and private practice defending the rights of working people.
Victoria Bruno | Victoria Bruno is a distinguished graduate of the West Virginia University College of Law, where she earned her law degree with a concentration in international law, she holds bar licenses to practice law in Illinois, Maryland, and West Virginia. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, Victoria is first-generation American on her mother's side and second-generation on her father's side. During her time at the WVU Immigration Law Clinic, she fought for humanitarian causes by filing petitions for humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, preparing briefs for immigration court hearings, and volunteering at a United States Army base for an asylum and special immigrant visa workshop. Victoria’s dedication to social justice and immigration rights reflects her family’s history of hard work and perseverance. Having witnessed the struggles and triumphs of her parents and grandparents, she became a staunch advocate for immigrants who may not have the same opportunities that she was granted. Today, Victoria serves as the Managing Attorney for FLAP, aiming to leverage her knowledge and experience to benefit and protect the immigrant working population of the Low-income community in Illinois. She works actively with the needs of the community, including her participation in the centralized workshops for Temporary Protected Status, Parole in Place, and DALE applications. Victoria focuses her work on asylum and humanitarian immigration relief, as well as on family immigration services. She maintains a strong connection within the immigration legal community of Illinois to develop her skill set and continue to provide quality services to the community.
Michael Dale | Michael Dale is a Supervisory Attorney with the National Labor Relations Board’s Contempt, Compliance, and Special Litigation Branch, based in Washington, D.C. Michael joined the NLRB in 2022 and has defended the Agency in a variety of matters raising challenges to the Agency’s structure and powers. Before working at the NLRB, he was as a litigation associate at an international firm. He is a graduate of the Duke University School of Law.
Jorge Salles Diaz (he/they) | Jorge immigrated to the United States when he was fifteen. After college he worked at an immigrants advocacy organization where he responded to workplace immigration raids and coordinated legal clinics for immigrant families. He was also an organizer at a workers center. His experiences working with immigrant workers inspired him to join the labor movement and to help workers build power and create a better world for everyone across borders, race, national origin, gender, age, language, and disability. He is a first-year labor and employee benefits associate at O’Donoghue & O’Donoghue in Washington, DC. Jorge attended Vanderbilt Law School where he was President of the Labor and Employment Society.
Antonia Domingo | Antonia has worked for the United Steelworkers Legal Department since she graduated from law school in 2015. She is a PBF alum and a member of the Peggy Browning Fund Board, the ACLU Pennsylvania Board, and Pittsburgh’s Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance chapter.
Erin Drake | Erin D. Drake is Senior Advisor and Legal Counsel at the Women's National Basketball Players Association. In her role, Drake works closely with players and other staff to address social, cultural, workplace, and legal concerns that arise for players, and prepares the Union to strategically respond. She serves as a primary point of contact with national and global labor, political, and advocacy organizations, in addition to other outside legal counsel and organizations. She began her work with the Union in 2022 as an Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Fellow. Prior to that, Drake clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Drake received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she interned at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization in the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic (WIRAC) and served on the 2018-2019 Yale Law Women Board. She received her B.A., cum laude, in History and Literature from Harvard University, where she received the Paul Revere Frothingham Fund Prize for senior class member who exemplifies scholarship and character; the Barrett Wendell Prize for exceptional sophomore work and served as the Class of 2017 Freshman Convocation Speaker.
Paul T. Esposito | Mr. Esposito has practiced employee benefits law exclusively during his career and has extensive experience in matters relating to private and public welfare and pension plans under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, the Pension Protection Act, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), and related state laws. Mr. Esposito has represented clients in many aspects of pension and welfare employee benefit plan administration, plan design and fiduciary issues, with special emphasis in the areas of plan tax qualification, welfare plan contracting, withdrawal liability (including mass withdrawal liability issues), ACA compliance and subrogation/overpayment recoveries. Mr. Esposito has represented clients in numerous Department of Labor and Internal Revenue Service investigations and has guided clients in correcting plan operational issues through the IRS Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System program. Mr. Esposito has spoken on employee benefit issues at conferences focused on both public and private plans, including conferences held by the New York State Bar Association and the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys. Mr. Esposito is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and New York.
Matthew Cypriano Fernandes (he/any) | Matt is a union trust fund attorney with Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is in his first year of practice after having been a Peggy Browning Fellow at the firm in 2022 and 2023. He graduated from Berkeley Law where he was Co-President of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association as well as Articles Editor for the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law. Before entering the legal field, Matt organized rideshare drivers for SEIU Local 1021 and worked as a Program Assistant for the West Oakland Job Resource Center where he helped formerly incarcerated individuals find union employment in the building trades. As a first-generation college graduate and the child of immigrants, Matt is dedicated to bringing more people from underrepresented backgrounds into the sphere of radical lawyering.
Michelle Fujii (she/they) | Michelle is a first-year Honors Attorney at the General Counsel Headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Japan, Michelle graduated from Northeastern University School of Law where she served as Co-President of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association. In 2023, she was a Peggy Browning Fellow with the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART). Before law school, Michelle worked as a policy advocate for nuclear disarmament and as a paralegal at a plaintiff-side employment law firm. Her varied personal and professional experiences have shown her the pivotal role of organized labor in building people power and she hopes to dedicate her career to this end.
Nicholas J Gleichman | Nicholas J Gleichman: has been a union counsel since becoming a lawyer 2016, representing workers at various state courts and agencies including the NLRB and PERB. Currently he works in the legal department of SEIU Local 1000, representing 10 different bargaining units of California state workers. previously, he has represented SEIU international as well as workers in the fight for fifteen campaign. He is also the president of UAW Local 2350. He has a great fondness for the Orioles and is considered an expert river rafter by several of his own family members.
Lisa Heinzerling | Professor Heinzerling teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, where her primary specialties are environmental and administrative law. She has published several books on topics including environmental law and the regulatory and administrative state. She received the Georgetown President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, the Frank F. Flegal faculty teaching award at Georgetown Law, and numerous awards related to her scholarship and advocacy in environmental law. She is a former public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and a former chair of the board of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. After finishing law school, where she served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review, Professor Heinzerling clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court. She was one of the inaugural Skadden Fellows, at Business & Professional People for the Public Interest, in Chicago, and for three years practiced environmental law in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office.
Heide Hernandez-Jimenez | Heide Hernandez-Jimenez is a second year Board-side Honors Attorney at the National Labor Relations Board. Before joining the Board, Heide was a legal fellow at Farmworker Justice where she primarily worked on impact litigation and policy advocacy. She has a BA in Political Science and Latino Studies from the University of Connecticut and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law.
Meredith Jason | Meredith Jason is Deputy Assistant General Counsel in the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Branch of the National Labor Relations Board. Meredith joined the Branch in 1995 as a briefing attorney and was promoted to Supervisory Attorney in 2001. In 2010, she was promoted to her current position. From February-July 2021, she served as Special Advisor to Acting General Counsel Peter Sung Ohr. Meredith received her BA from Boston University and her JD from American University, Washington College of Law, in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the Board, Meredith clerked for the Honorable Ronald P. Wertheim, of the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, and worked in private practice in Washington, D.C. Meredith is a member of the ABA Committee on the Development of the Law Under the NLRA and serves as an Associate Editor of The Developing Labor Law. She also is a fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
David Jury | David Jury is General Counsel of the United Steelworkers, a position he has held since October 2017. David has worked in the USW’s Legal Department in Pittsburgh since 1996 and has appeared regularly before federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts and in NLRB proceedings. As General Counsel, he advises the union’s officers and participates in bargaining in many of the union’s major industrial sectors. A graduate of The George Washington University Law School, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Peggy Browning Fund.
Maiyisha Keita (she/her) | Maiyisha is a 2023 PBF Alum who has dedicated her legal career to public service and criminal defense. During her PBF Fellowship she joined the team of the Sugar Law Center in Detroit where she engaged in movement policy with Detroit Right to Counsel Coalition ensuring that district judges provided public assistance of counsel to citizens facing housing evictions. Additionally, she has worked alongside attorneys general in the North Carolina Department of Justice, specifically in the OSH/Labor section, where she held state employers accountable for upholding occupational safety and health policies, ensuring the safety of state employees and surrounding communities. She has worked alongside the Memphis Public Defenders where she led numerous negotiations with district attorneys advocating for indigent clients. Maiyisha is also a native of Memphis, Tennessee, and a proud HBCU law school graduate of North Carolina Central University School of Law.
Kim Kelly | Kim Kelly is a labor reporter for In These Times magazine and has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018. Her writing on labor, class, politics, disability, and culture has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and many others. Kelly has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Previously, she was the heavy metal editor at Noisey, Vice’s music vertical, and helped organize the Vice union. A third-generation union member, she served three terms as an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East Council. Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, was published in 2022. She was born in the heart of the South Jersey Pine Barrens and currently lives in Philadelphia with a hard-workin’ man, a couple of taxidermy bears, and way too many books.
Juhyung Harold Lee | Harold is an associate at Altshuler Berzon LLP, where he represents labor unions, workers, and nonprofit organizations in a wide range of matters, including arbitrations, administrative proceedings, and litigation. He also provides advice in areas such as collective bargaining, legislative drafting, and local government law. Prior to joining his current firm, Harold performed similar work as an associate at Rothner, Segall & Greenstone. While a law student, Harold was a Peggy Browning Fellow at New York State United Teachers and a contributor to OnLabor.org. Before attending law school, Harold worked as a teacher at two public elementary schools in New York City.
Danielle Leonard | Danielle Leonard is a partner at Altshuler Berzon in San Francisco, California, where she has practiced law since 2003. Danielle’s practice consists primarily of complex litigation. She has represented international, state and local labor unions, environmental groups and other advocacy organizations, and workers, students, and consumers in class actions, in cases involving diverse areas of law including labor law, employment law, voting rights and other constitutional issues. She has briefed and argued numerous cases at the trial and appellate levels in federal and state courts. Danielle is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Peggy Browning Fund. Prior to joining the firm, Danielle was a trial attorney in the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, and is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges.
Geoffrey Leonard | Geoffrey Leonard is an attorney in the legal department at SEIU Local 32BJ, where he provides counsel to the Union's Capital Area District (Maryland, DC, and Virginia). Before joining Local 32BJ, he worked as an attorney at Levy Ratner, PC, where he represents a variety of union, workers cooperative, non-profit, and individual worker clients on labor, employment, non-profit and campaign finance matters; the Detroit Justice Center, where he worked on policy misconduct, the criminalization of poverty, and support for abolitionist organizing; and as a Law Fellow at SEIU, where he was counsel to the home care and fight for $15 campaigns. He attended Georgetown University Law Center, and was a 2013 Peggy Browning Fellow at the DC Employment Justice Center, where he worked on wage theft issues. Before law school, he became involved in the labor movement as a shop steward for UAW Local 2320, NOLSW. He is from New York City and likes cats and the New York Mets.
Joe Lurie | Joseph Lurie, Founder and President of the Peggy Browning Fund, retired in 2010 as the Senior Partner in the law firm of Galfand Berger in Philadelphia, PA. His practice included union side labor, workers’ compensation and products liability cases. Some of the cases he handled have set national precedents. Mr. Lurie successfully represented injured workers before the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He tried several hundred cases in the County Court systems and various Federal District Courts throughout Pennsylvania. A member of the American Trial Lawyers Association, Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Associations, he has written and lectured extensively. Mr. Lurie is the founder of three non-profit agencies: The Pennsylvania Federation of Injured Workers, a support group for men and women who have been injured at work; Peggy Browning Fund, a memorial to his late wife, Margaret A. Browning, to educate law students on the rights and needs of workers; and Kids’ Chance of Pennsylvania, a scholarship fund for children of workers who have been seriously injured or killed while at work.
Andrew Lyubarsky | Andrew Lyubarsky has been an Associate General Counsel at the AFL-CIO since June 2022, where he has assisted in amicus filings resisting the constitutional attacks on the NLRB’s authority. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, he was an immigration attorney at a New York City-area public defender, representing detained immigrants, and prior to that, had worked for Bredhoff & Kaiser PLLC, a DC-area labor law firm. He has clerked for judges on the Second Circuit and the Southern District of New York, and is a 2016 graduate of New York University School of Law. When in law school, he was a Peggy Browning Fellow at Levy Ratner, P.C. in New York City.
Ingrid Nava | Ingrid Nava is Associate General Counsel for Service Employees International Union. Before this role, she was Associate General Counsel for SEIU Local 32BJ, 32BJ, the largest labor union for property services workers in the country and a union with a large immigrant membership. Ms. Nava is also a founding board member of Justice at Work, a legal services nonprofit organization serving immigrant worker centers in Massachusetts. She previously served as an employment lawyer for low-wage workers with Greater Boston Legal Services, where along with direct client representation, she provided legal counsel to immigrant worker centers. Prior to law school, Ms. Nava was an organizer for SEIU. She earned her JD from Northeastern University School of Law and her AB from Stanford University.
Isabel Carmen Oraha (she/her) | Isabel is a regional attorney for Region 19 of the National Labor Relations Board. She was a Peggy Browning Fellow in 2022 for Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld in addition to working for various labor and employment clinics, firms, and nonprofits throughout law school. She served on the board of University of San Diego’s Middle Eastern Law Society, raising scholarship money for Middle Eastern students. She grew up attending Teamsters barbecues and was inspired to practice labor law because she views labor rights as human rights.
Alex Perkins | Alex is a staff representative for United Steelworkers District 9 and services bargaining units in Georgia and Alabama. Alex is a third-generation union member who has a passion for fighting for working class people while helping to grow his union. In addition to his critical role in organizing Blue Bird workers, he was also deeply involved in the Steelworkers organizing win at Kumho Tire in Macon, Georgia.
Julie Pittman | Julie Pittman is a Trial Attorney in the New York Regional Solicitor’s Office of the U.S. Department of Labor. She has worked at the intersection of immigration and employment law as a paralegal at the Farmworker Unit of Legal Aid of North Carolina, a Peggy Browning Fellow at Adelante Alabama Worker Center, and a Justice Catalyst fellow at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. She is a graduate of Brown University and Berkeley Law and clerked in the District of New Mexico before joining DOL as an Honors Attorney in 2022.
Molly Baker Ragan | Molly Ragan is a temporary organizer with UAW Region 9A, primarily leading new organizing campaigns in New York City higher education. Ragan primarily supports academic workers at private universities who exist in the complex gray areas of labor law, including non-academic student workers and tenure and tenure-track faculty. She is a member of ACT-UAW Local 7902, UAW Staff United, and UAWD.
Alex Roe | Alex Roe is Managing Counsel at the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers Alliance, a professional organization for union lawyers. In that role, she helps plan seminars, webinars, and conferences offering continuing legal education tailored to the needs of lawyers who represent AFL-CIO affiliated unions. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, she was Headquarters Counsel at Communications Workers of America where she provided advice and guidance on employee benefits, labor, employment, insurance, and other areas of law relevant to a large international union. Alex received her B.A. from Carleton College and her J.D. from George Washington University.
Rachel Del Rossi | Rachel Del Rossi is the Executive Director of the Peggy Browning Fund. Rachel has over 20 years of experience as a non-profit leader and community organizer, with a focus on public systems change, generational power shifts, and intersectional movement alliance. She has a BA in US History and Public Policy from the Evergreen State College and a Master’s in Public Affairs from the Goldman School for Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
Chris Salm | Chris is USW’s Assistant Director of Organizing. He has worked in the labor movement for over 20 years. He has significant responsibilities for USW’s organizing efforts in the American South, including its campaigns to organize tire industry workers, and he also oversees USW’s efforts to organize workers in the emerging green manufacturing economy.
Sejal Singh | Sejal Singh (she/her) is an attorney in the Solicitor of Labor’s Fair Labor Standards Division, where her work includes strengthening and enforcing workers’ wage and hour rights, with a special focus on raising labor standards in federally-funded jobs and protecting migrant workers’ rights. She previously served in the Office of the Solicitor as an Honors Attorney from 2022 to 2024. Prior to joining the Honors Program, Sejal clerked for the Honorable Judge Diane P. Wood on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, worked as a Justice Catalyst fellow at Public Citizen Litigation Group, and was a founding co-Director of the People’s Parity Project. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2020, where she received the David A. Grossman award for exemplary clinical practice.
Jay Smith | A shareholder in Gilbert & Sackman in Los Angeles, Jay has represented labor unions and their members for 38 years. Previously a partner at Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall & Whatley in Alabama, Mr. Smith has represented the United Steelworkers for almost his entire legal career, and now serves as USW’s District Counsel for the eleven western states. He is also greatly honored to represent other militant and progressive labor organizations, including UNAC/UHCP, AFSCME, many IATSE Local Unions, AGVA, UNITE HERE Local 11, UFCW Local 324, many USW local unions and other local unions. He appears regularly in federal and state courts, before the NLRB and PERB, before arbitrators, and in collective bargaining negotiations. Jay also represents plaintiffs in class action litigation. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Alabama School of Law and has been a member of the Peggy Browning Fund’s Board of Directors since 2017.
Nicole Steinberg | Nicole Steinberg is a Law Clerk at the New York Regional Solicitor’s Office of the U.S. Department of Labor, which she joined through the Honors Program after graduating from the University of Texas School of Law. In law school, Nicole interned at the Service Employees International Union as a Peggy Browning Fellow and at the National Labor Relations Board. Nicole became interested in workers’ rights through her position as a case manager at a workforce development agency prior to law school.
Tiffany Wang (she/her) | Tiffany is a third generation Chinese Taiwanese American originally from Maryland but now living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a Legal Fellow with Innovation Law Lab’s Anticarceral Legal Organizing team, fighting to end immigrant detention in New Mexico while ensuring that communities surrounding immigrant prisons can thrive without relying on human suffering. She was a 2023 Peggy Browning Fellow at the Equal Justice Center, where she supported immigrant workers and helped them navigate a new immigration deferred action process for labor enforcement. As a cafe worker throughout her three years in law school, Tiffany understands the importance of cross racial and cross economic solidarity in the labor movement.
Patrick Watkins | Patrick is a native of Perry, Georgia and is was one of the first six people who initially met with Alex Perkins to start the organizing campaign. Patrick is now the inaugural president of Steelworkers Local 697 at the Blue Bird plant. Raised by Patricia Harris, Patrick is also dedicated to his community, where he coaches youth sports teams.
Marley Weiss | Marley Weiss received her B.A. from Barnard College and her J.D. from the Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, she practiced labor law for ten years with the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). She was the first woman attorney hired into the UAW General Counsel’s office. Since 1984, she has been a member of the faculty of the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, where she is Professor of Law. Professor Weiss also has taught at Eötvös Loránd Faculty of Law and at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and has supervised Maryland’s international clinic students working in Mexico. She is a former Secretary of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law, a past co-chair of the Section’s Committee on International Labor and Employment Law, and a co-chair of the Section’s Committee on Immigration and Human Trafficking. During the Clinton administration, she chaired the U.S. National Advisory Committee on the NAFTA Labor Side Agreement. She is a member of the Peggy Browning Fund’s Advisory Board and its Conference Planning Committee.
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