Conference Speakers
Erika Andiola
Political Director of National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Erika Andiola is the Political Director at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). Previously, Andiola served as the Chief Advocacy Officer for RAICES and was Press Secretary for Latino Outreach for Bernie 2016. She started her community organizing experience when she co-founded the Arizona Dream Act Coalition at Arizona State University. She then served in the National Coordinating Committee and the Board of Directors for the United We Dream Network. Her personal struggle as a formerly undocumented person has given her the drive and passion for immigrant and human rights.
of counsel at Bush Gottlieb, ALC, Senior Advisor to the President at Communications Workers of America, Harvard's CLJE Fellow
Jennifer Ann Abruzzo is an American attorney and former government official who served as General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 2021 to 2025. A native of Queens, New York City, she was raised in a large Roman Catholic family.
Early Career at NLRB (1995–2017)
Abruzzo began her legal career as a civil litigation attorney in the medical malpractice division of a South Florida firm. In January 1995, she joined the National Labor Relations Board as a field attorney in Miami. Over nearly 23 years, she rose through various positions including Supervisory Field Attorney, Deputy Regional Attorney, and Deputy Assistant General Counsel in the Division of Operations-Management in Washington, DC, where she oversaw Regional operations in the Northeast and Midwest. She ultimately served as Deputy General Counsel during the Obama administration and later as Acting General Counsel.
Communications Workers of America (2018–2021)
In February 2018, Abruzzo became Special Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at Communications Workers of America (CWA), the largest media and communications union in the United States. In 2019, the AFL-CIO recommended her for a vacant Democratic seat on the NLRB. During the presidential transition of Joe Biden, she served as an advisor to the President-elect on matters of labor policy.
NLRB General Counsel (2021–2025)
President Joe Biden nominated Abruzzo to become NLRB General Counsel on February 17, 2021. She was confirmed by the Senate in a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. She became the second woman to serve as NLRB General Counsel, after Rosemary Collyer. She was sworn in on July 22, 2021.
Key Initiatives & Accomplishments
During her tenure as General Counsel, Abruzzo pursued an ambitious pro-worker agenda:
- College Athletes: Issued a memo declaring that college athletes have the right to organize.
- Immigrant Workers: Pushed for the NLRB to protect immigrants’ rights to organize, regardless of immigration status.
- BLM Protests: In October 2021, stated that employees who participated in Black Lives Matter protests were protected under federal labor law.
- Captive Audience Meetings: In April 2022, issued a memorandum calling for the NLRB to find mandatory “captive audience” meetings unlawful.
- Non-Compete Clauses: In May 2023, notified Regional Offices that non-compete clauses should generally be considered unlawful.
- Amazon Labor Union: Her leadership at the NLRB was credited as contributing to the success of the Amazon Labor Union organizing drive at the JFK8 facility in Staten Island, New York.
Return to CWA (2025–Present)
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Abruzzo was fired via email on January 27, 2025. She has since returned to the Communications Workers of America as Senior Advisor to the President.
Interim Dean and Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law, ASU Law
Angela M. Banks serves as Interim Dean and Charles J. Merriam Distinguished Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. She is an immigration and citizenship expert whose research focuses on membership and belonging in democratic societies. Her scholarship has appeared in leading American law review journals such as the Emory Law Journal, the William & Mary Law Review and the Brooklyn Law Review.
As a member of ASU Law’s executive leadership team, Dean Banks has played a key role in advancing the college’s academic innovation and strategic growth. She has spearheaded initiatives focused on expanding access to legal education, strengthening student success and enhancing the college’s national impact. Dean Banks led the development and launch of ASU Law’s part-time, online Juris Doctor program, helping position the college at the forefront of flexible and accessible legal education. Her leadership reflects a deep commitment to preparing future lawyers through forward-thinking programs that meet the evolving needs of students, communities and the legal profession.
Prior to joining the ASU Law faculty, Dean Banks was a Professor of Law at William & Mary School of Law. She has also served as the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School; a legal advisor to Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal; an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, DC (now WilmerHale); and as a law clerk for Judge Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Dean Banks received a B.A. in sociology from Spelman College, summa cum laude, and a Master of Letters in sociology from Oxford University, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard International Law Journal.
Employment Policy Attorney, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Sophia Balemian-Spencer’s professional passions lie at the intersection of employment, race, immigration, and gender/sexuality issues. She takes a community-informed approach to her legal and advocacy work, engaging directly with workers and organizers to ensure her efforts advance equity in ways that are both responsive to community needs and grounded in lived experience.
Sophia is currently the Employment Policy Attorney at the National Domestic Workers Alliance (“NDWA”), where she advocates for stronger protections for domestic workers on the state and local level across the United States. Before joining NDWA, Sophia was a Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow—and later the Workers’ Rights Associate Counsel—at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. In this role, she litigated on behalf of low-income D.C. residents of color facing employment discrimination, sexual harassment, wage theft, and misclassification issues. She also held internships at the National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National LGBTQ Task Force.
This year, Sophia co-authored the LexisNexis District of Columbia Employment and Labor Law. In 2022, she received her J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia’s David A. Clarke School of Law. In 2018, she obtained a B.A. in American Studies with minors in Criminal Justice and History from the George Washington University.
Partner, Martin & Bonnett PLLC
DANIEL L. BONNETT is a graduate of Augustana College (Ill.), the Drake University School of Law, and founding member and partner of Martin & Bonnett, PLLC. Mr. Bonnett is admitted to practice in the states of Illinois, Iowa and Arizona as well as the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits and United States District Courts for the Districts of Arizona, Central District of Illinois, Northern District of Iowa and Connecticut. Mr. Bonnett has litigated a wide variety of individual plaintiff and labor union matters as well as collective and class actions involving a wide range of labor and employment law, covering workplace issues, discrimination, retaliation, wage and hour, and wrongful discharge under state and federal statutes including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Americans with Disabilities Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Family Medical Leave Act, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, National Labor Relations Act and various other federal civil rights and employment statutes. He is rated AV ® Preeminent™ – Judicial Edition by Martindale Hubbell and selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers of the Southwest and The Best Lawyers in America. ® Mr. Bonnett is a member of the American Bar Association, the ABA Labor and Employment Law Section’s Employment Rights and Responsibilities Standing Committee, an American Bar Foundation Fellow, a member and Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, the National Employment Lawyers Association, Federal Bar Association, Arizona Employment Lawyers Association, Arizona State Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, and recipient of the Rogers/Hayden Outstanding Achievement Award by the Arizona State Bar, Labor and Employment Law Section in 2025. Mr. Bonnett has written and presented on numerous panels and programs extensively at the national and state level covering multiple topics related to current issues and developing trends in labor and employment law.
Executive Director, Equal Rights Advocates
Noreen Farrell is a nationally recognized movement leader and innovator in the fight for gender justice and an expert in law, policy, and culture change. She is the Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates, a national legal non-profit advancing gender, racial, and economic justice across the nation. Noreen is also President and CEO of the Equal Rights Advocates Action Fund. Noreen has a distinguished track record working on a broad set of issues central to the lives of women and girls. As a civil rights litigator, she has represented thousands of women and girls in groundbreaking impact litigation to end sex discrimination in school and the workplace, including before the U.S. Supreme Court. As founder and leader of state and national policy reform campaigns, she helped pass and implement the nation’s first paid family leave law as well as the country’s strongest laws combating wage injustice, gender-based violence, and discrimination against caregivers. Noreen founded and co-chairs the Stronger California Advocates Network, unifying over 75+ organizational members since 2014 behind passage of 66 new laws addressing poverty, supporting working families, growing workplace equity, and defending reproductive choice. These new laws have dramatically increased the family economic security of 30 million workers, including 5 million low-paid workers. After incubating laws at the state level, Noreen helps replicate them nationwide. Noreen founded and co-chairs the national Equal Pay Today Campaign, building power with 100+ organizational partners to combat a gender wage gap harming women of color and low paid women workers. Through her leadership, Noreen has seized a cultural zeitgeist on wage justice, with pay equity and pay transparency emerging as a top issue among workers and voters across a wide political spectrum. Over the past decade, Noreen has supported hundreds of new laws promoting salary transparency, ensuring that hiring wages do not incorporate past bias, raising the subminimum wage of tipped workers, paving pathways for women into higher wage jobs, and increasing income security for workers with caregiving and family caregiving responsibilities. A national thought leader, Noreen presents, testifies, and publishes widely. She is regularly featured as a legal and social commentator in national and international media outlets like the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Fortune, the PBS NewsHour, MSNBC, and various cable outlets. Noreen has received numerous awards, including as a Top Innovator in Law. Most recently, Noreen was honored as a Pay Equity Champion by Justice for Migrant Women, presented at the United Nations.
Founding Partner, Frankel Syverson PLLC
Ty Frankel represents clients in class action and labor and employment law matters. Ty has litigated national, regional, and state-wide class and collective actions and individual actions on behalf of employees seeking to recover unpaid wages and overtime.
Ty served as a contributor for the American Bar Association Treatise on the Fair Labor Standards Act. Ty frequently teaches Continuing Legal Education courses about the laws regulating timely payment of wages, overtime, minimum wage, and Paid Sick Time in Arizona.
Ty serves on the Board of Directors for the National Employment Lawyers Association and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Arizona Employment Lawyers Association.
Ty earned his law degree from Boston College Law School, graduating cum laude. During law school, he was a LEND Fellow at the Boston Children’s Hospital, where he studied legal and public policy to advance the rights of children with developmental disabilities.
Partner, Cohen Milstein
Agnieszka Fryszman, chair and founder of the Human Rights practice at Cohen Milstein, is recognized as leading one of the best private international human rights practices in the world.
Agnieszka has received some of the legal profession’s highest honors including the National Law Journal’s Lifetime Achievement award, Public Justice’s Trial Lawyer
of the Year Award, the Human Trafficking Legal Center’s Human Trafficking Advocate of the Year Award, Appleseed’s Pillar of Justice award, and was named a “Legend” by Lawdragon. She was also named to Forbes Magazine 50 over 50 list as a changemaker who leaves the world better than she found it.
She represents individuals who have been victims of torture, human trafficking, forced and slave labor and other violations of international law. An expert and leader in the field of human rights law, Agnieszka regularly litigates cases against corporate giants and foreign powers. She has a proven track record at all stages of litigation: she has led successful litigation teams, tried cases to verdict, obtained favorable settlements, and presented successful arguments at the courts of appeals.
Councilwoman Betty Guardado, Phoenix City Council, District 5
Betty grew up in a working-class family. When her father, a butcher, became disabled after an accident, her mother began cleaning houses, and Betty took on cooking, cleaning, and caring for her younger brothers. While working as a hotel housekeeper, she became active in the hospitality workers union, helping organize her coworkers for better workplace protections. Her success as an organizer led her to Maryvale in 2007, where she became the director of organizing for UNITE HERE! Local 11 in Arizona. She coordinated major campaigns, negotiated contracts for thousands of hotel and food-service workers, and helped lead independent voter turnout efforts while mentoring new leaders and empowering youth.
Transitioning to public service has been the honor of her career. Since being elected to the Phoenix City Council in 2019, she has prioritized collaboration with neighborhood leaders, stakeholders, and local government to build a shared vision for West Phoenix. Over her seven years in office, she has focused on strengthening communities, beautifying neighborhoods, supporting economic investment, and improving the standard of living for working-class families. She has also worked closely with local school districts to expand educational opportunities.
Betty has served on numerous subcommittees, including Public Safety & Justice, Land Use & Livability, Transportation & Infrastructure, and Community & Cultural Investment (which she previously chaired), and co-chaired the Latino Cultural Center. She currently serves on the Economic Development and Arts subcommittee, overseeing key issues affecting District 5.
She and her husband have lived in Maryvale for fourteen years, where they are raising their two children.
Monica Guizar
Associate General Counsel, SEIU
Monica is an Associate General Counsel with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where she currently serves as Organizing Lead Counsel. She previously served as the SEIU Property Services Division Lead Counsel and before that as counsel to SEIU’s Immigrant Justice Campaign. She provides legal support to SEIU organizing campaigns, including the janitorial and security officers’ organizing campaigns. She also advises on issues that impact immigrant workers. Prior to joining SEIU in 2019, Monica was an attorney and shareholder with the law firm Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld, and an employment policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).
Founder, Aaron Halegua, PLLC
Aaron Halegua is the founding member of Aaron Halegua, PLLC and a research fellow at NYU School of Law and Oxford University. The law firm focuses on labor and employment litigation and has particular experience representing human trafficking and forced labor victims. In 2017, Mr. Halegua assisted over 2,400 Chinese construction workers trafficked to the island of Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), to recover $14 million in backpay through the U.S. Department of Labor. He also won $6.9 million for seven of those workers in a civil litigation alleging forced labor against the casino and construction firms that hired them in Saipan. As a result, Mr. Halegua was named the Human Trafficking Legal Center’s “Litigator of the Year” in 2021 and received the “Grantee Hero Award” from the Impact Fund in 2022. Since then, Mr. Halegua has represented dozens of Chinese, Filipino, and other immigrant workers in forced labor cases in Georgia, New Mexico, New York, the CNMI, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has represented workers in forced labor cases concerning numerous industries, including the construction, cannabis, manufacturing, and chemical analysis industries. Mr. Halegua currently serves as a Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Immigration and Human Trafficking; he has done numerous trainings and presentations on forced labor and human trafficking; and he has published articles and book chapters on these subjects. Additionally, Aaron has consulted on numerous international labor law reform and rule of law programs for the International Labor Organization, Ford Foundation, Solidarity Center, SEIU, Asia Society, and other organizations in China, Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Mexico, Thailand, and elsewhere. Mr. Halegua has an AB from Brown University and JD from Harvard Law School. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Peking University Law School after college. He speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese.
Director, National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program, Legal Aid at Work
Christopher Ho directs the work of the National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program at Legal Aid at Work, a San Francisco-based non-profit legal services organization whose mission is to serve low-wage workers through community education, individual client services, legislative and policy advocacy, and impact litigation in courts throughout the nation. He and his colleagues have litigated numerous legal questions of first impression in cases that have expanded the scope of the workplace protections available to undocumented and other immigrant workers, and helped to ensure their ability to vindicate their rights through the legal system without fear of intimidation or retaliation.
Director, Gender Based Violence and Harassment Law & Programming, Equal Rights Advocates
Bio coming soon!
Founder & Executive Director, The AI Rights Project
Jim W. Ko is the Founder & Executive Director of The AI Rights Project, a public-interest legal organization dedicated to preserving human judgment, creativity, and accountable agency in the AI Age, while ensuring that decisions about AI’s impacts on rights and governance remain subject to democratic choice. He is also Principal Attorney at Ko IP & AI Law PLLC, where he provides strategic legal counsel at the intersection of intellectual property and artificial intelligence. Jim is also an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, teaching a course on Reanchoring the AI Law to the Human Baseline and also serving as a Strategic Board Member for ASU Law’s Civil Rights. Migration, and Workplace Law Initiative.
Distinguished Professor of Practice, ASU Law
David Lopez is the founder of the ASU Law’s Civil Rights, Migration, and Workplace Law Initiative.This Initiative advances justice through education, scholarship and community engagement focused on civil rights, migration and workplace law. Through interdisciplinary research, innovative teaching and public programming, the Initiative explores how law shapes access to economic and political opportunity while promoting strategies for meaningful change.
David Lopez is formerly co-Dean Emeritus, University Professor, Professor of Law and Professor Alfred Slocum Scholar at Rutgers Law School. From 2018-21, David Lopez, served as Dean of Rutgers Law School-Newark campus. As co-Dean, directed operational matters for the Newark campus, including a steady increase in applications and admissions ;strengthening campus’s financial position; transitioning from in-person to remote learning during Global Pandemic; addressing pay equity matters, recruiting and selecting key management positions, including Assistant Dean for the Minority Student Program (MSP); and fundraising, including several MSP public interest fellowships and cultivating one of the largest gifts in recent Rutgers- Newark history.
During this period, as co-dean, Professor Lopez also testified in front of Congressional Committees on issues including AI and Discrimination, Latino/s in the Entertainment Industry, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission conciliation rule, and was frequently quoted in the media for areas in his expertise.
Prior to serving as Dean, he was the partner-in-charge of Outten and Golden, a plaintiff-side civil rights/class action firm, leading the firm’s Washington D.C. Office, where he opened and managed the office, and handled complex class cases involving social media and human trafficking in private prisons.
Until December 2016, he served for six years as the General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and thus acted as the lead lawyer for the nation’s primary administrative agency charged with enforcing federal employment anti-discrimination laws.
Dean Lopez was twice nominated to the General Counsel position by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate. As General Counsel, he led the litigation program for the nation’s primary administrative agency charged with enforcing federal employment anti-discrimination laws and oversaw 15 regional attorneys and a staff of more than 325 people. This included leading high-impact litigation in federal courts nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court, addressing LGBTQ coverage under the anti-discrimination law, vulnerable immigrant communities, criminal background screens, racial harassment, disability rights, and religious freedom. As a General Counsel and in the private sector, Lopez argued several cases in U.S. appellate courts across the country and, previous with the EEOC, was lead attorney in several successful jury trials.
Prior to joining the EEOC, Dean Lopez was a senior trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. Previously, he was an associate with Spiegel & McDiarmid LLP in Washington D.C.
Professor Lopez is a widely sought-after speaker who has made more than 75 speeches and presentations before the American Bar Association, state and local bar associations, and various advocacy, non-governmental organizations and universities on issues related to labor and employment law and civil rights.
He also serves on the board of directors for the National Women’s Law Center; the National Women’s Law Center, LLC (including the Times Up Legal Defense Fund); the Impact Fund (an Oakland-based non-profit offering support to public interest lawyers and communities through training, co-counsel and grants to advance civil rights and social justice); Towards Justice, (a Denver-based non-profit dedicated to advancing economic justice and advocacy); Milk with Dignity (a Vermont-based worker advocacy organization); and formerly with the ACLU-DC. In 2020, he served on the Stanford Medical School Commission on Justice and Equity.
Dean Lopez is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Attorneys. In 2014, The National Law Journal named him one of “America’s 50 Outstanding General Counsels.” Among the organizations that have recognized him for his work on social justice issues are: the International Religious Liberty Association, which gave him its National Religious Freedom Award, Liberty Magazine, the North American Religious Liberty Association, which cited his work on civil, religious, and employment rights; the Washington D.C. Hispanic Bar Association; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which gave him its Friend in Government Award in 2012.
He has been called a “Latino Luminary” by the magazine Diversity and the Bar and in 2011 Hispanic Business named him to its list of 100 “Influentials” in the Hispanic community. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science.
Professor Lopez has served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, a Visting Professor at Yale Law School, a Visiting Professor at Arizona State University, an Adjunct Professor at New York University Law School, a Lecturer at Georgetown Law Center, and an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University Law School.
Senior Staff Attorney, National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program, Legal Aid at Work
Hailey McAllister (she/her) is a Senior Staff Attorney in the National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program, which advocates for workers who face discrimination because of their ethnicity, immigration status, the languages they speak, or the parts of the world they have migrated from.
Before joining Legal Aid at Work, Hailey spent over a decade at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor, where she litigated cases addressing worker exploitation under a wide range of federal worker-protection laws. As a Senior Trial Attorney, she led enforcement actions combating wage theft, retaliation, and unsafe working conditions affecting frequently exploited populations, particularly immigrant workers, including those in H-visa programs and the agricultural and garment industries. She also played a central role in developing the practice guides and training addressing immigration-based retaliation and other challenges facing undocumented workers.
Prior to law school, Hailey worked as social worker serving mixed-status families through a home visiting program, an experience that continues to inform her legal advocacy. She has worked with clients from diverse backgrounds in community-based settings and in federal court litigation. Her earlier legal experience includes work with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, the Immigration Center for Women and Children, and Legal Aid at Work’s National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program as a law clerk.
Associate Professor and Center Director, Center for Work and Democracy, The Sanford School, ASU
Bio coming soon!
Distinguished Public Service Scholar; Associate Professor of Law; Co-Director of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
Shefali Milczarek-Desai is Associate Professor of Law and Co-Chair of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. She is the recipient of the College of Law’s Distinguished Public Service Scholar Award and is a Sustainable Economies Law Center Fellow.
Professor Desai teaches employment and labor law courses, torts, and seminars on issues in worker rights law. Her scholarship employs critical legal frameworks to analyze the worker rights paradigm and precarious workers’ rights, including migrant child labor, access to paid sick leave, and long-term care. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The California Law Review, The Texas A&M Law Review, The Columbia Human Rights Law Review, The UCLA Women’s Law Journal, The Arizona State Law Journal, The Arkansas Law Review, and The Journal of Tort Law, among others. Professor Desai also engages in creative projects such as the award-winning documentary film, Soledad, which is based on her representation of a young woman seeking asylum in the United States.
Previously, Professor Desai directed the Workers’ Rights Clinic and instructed students in client-centered and cross-cultural lawyering through representation of low-wage workers throughout Arizona’s borderlands. She and her students worked on cases resulting in published decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Arizona District Court upholding the rights of precarious workers. Professor Desai also has created, launched and taught in-person and online courses in the College of Law’s undergraduate law, master’s in legal studies, and foreign diplomat training programs.
Professor Desai speaks on work law issues both nationally and internationally and regularly presents at conferences and workshops around the country and the world. She has or will present her scholarship at the Marco Biagi Centre for International and Comparative Studies in Italy, the Diplomatic Academy of México in Ciudad de México, Mexican Consulates in the United States, the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City, the Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL), the Law & Society Association (LSA), the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Society on Aging (ASA), the Wisconsin International Law Journal, the State Bar of Arizona, and the Arizona Women Lawyers Association among others.
Prior to teaching, Professor Desai spent several years engaged in law practice where she assisted in litigating Flores v. Arizona, a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the rights of English Language Learners in Arizona public schools, was elected shareholder at the DeConcini McDonald law firm, and clerked for Vice-Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor at the Arizona Supreme Court. She has been selected as an Alternate Fulbright Award Winner, Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a Feerick Center Social Justice Leader, a Notre Dame Law School Feminist Jurisprudence Award Winner, and has published numerous articles and essays as well as a book manuscript selected as a finalist in an international competition. Her favorite pastimes include hiking, reading, creative writing, and being with her family.
Associate Director, National Council for Occupational Safety and Health
Katelyn Parady is the Associate Director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH). She brings a decade of experience building the capacity and power of worker justice organizations to the COSH Network’s 26 grassroots affiliates. Based in Phoenix, Katelyn also oversees efforts to build worker safety organizing infrastructure in Arizona. She has played a lead role in helping workers and organizers develop campaigns for local and statewide extreme heat protections.
Katelyn was previously the Associate Director of Justice at Work, a Boston-based legal nonprofit that supports low-wage workers, worker centers, and their organizing efforts. She was born and raised in the mining town of Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Associate Professor of Law, UC Law San Francisco
Seema N. Patel is an Associate Professor of Law whose research critically engages the intersection of technology, labor, and economic justice. Her scholarship examines how artificial intelligence, algorithmic surveillance, and data-driven systems are transforming the regulation of work, particularly for low-wage and precarious workers. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working in public interest law, government enforcement, and grassroots advocacy, Patel examines how emerging technologies exacerbate existing inequities and reconfigure power between workers, employers, and the state. Her most recent article, Governance & Guardrails: Low-Wage Workers & Emerging Technologies, 85 Md. L. Rev. 1 (2025), explores the legal and policy implications of “bossware” and AI-driven management tools in workplaces such as fast food, hospitality, and warehousing. The article details how predictive scheduling algorithms, workplace surveillance systems, and emerging technologies affect worker rights, agency, and collective action. In both her writing and teaching, Patel centers the lived experience of low-wage workers and critically assesses how labor, technology, and privacy law must evolve to meet the challenges of a technologically mediated workplace.
Before joining the UC Law SF faculty, Patel held a range of leadership roles. As Deputy Director of the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, she oversaw local workplace protections and enforcement strategies, including those involving technology-mediated scheduling and paid leave mandates. She also served as a Senior Advisor to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and litigated on behalf of workers as a trial and appellate attorney with the U.S. Department of Labor. Patel previously directed the East Bay Community Law Center at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she taught community lawyering and led clinical programs focused on housing, employment, and public benefits. Her career has been grounded in movement lawyering and a commitment to building power with communities historically marginalized by the legal system.
At UC Law SF, she teaches Employment Law, Employment Discrimination, Movement Lawyering, and Future of Workplace Regulation. Her classroom and scholarship are deeply informed by a commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, critical race theory, and a praxis-oriented approach to the future of work.
Patel holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley with a triple major in Political Science, Rhetoric, and German. She clerked on the Federal district court (Maryland) and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She served as a Thomas C. Grey Fellow at Stanford Law School and has been recognized with multiple fellowships and awards for her scholarship and service. Patel is a frequent commentator in local and national media outlets, including the New York Times, NBC, The Guardian, and Community Sentinel.
Assistant Professor of Labor History, UW Tacoma
Anthony Pratcher II is an historian from the Salt River Valley. He currently teaches in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma. His previous appointments were in the Ethnic Studies Program at Northern Arizona University, Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University, and at the Center for the Study of Race + Ethnicity in America at Brown University. While his public scholarship explores space and race in the American Southwest, he has co-edited a textbook on planning history, Planning Future Cities (Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 2017), with Walter Greason, and is currently completing a new manuscript, Searching for my People: Black Arizonans and the Making of the Metropolitan Southwest, under contract with University of Arizona Press. His work has been published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Pennsylvania Magazine of Biography and History, Southern California Quarterly and Technology and Culture. He earned a Ph. D. in American History from the University of Pennsylvania and received a B.A. in History from Howard University. He serves as financial secretary for the Black Family Genealogy and History Society in Phoenix, Arizona and is a proud graduate of Deer Valley High School in Glendale, Arizona.
Founder and President, Justice for Migrant Women
Mónica Ramírez is a trailblazing Latina leader reshaping social justice in the workplace and beyond. As the founder and president of Justice For Migrant Women, Mónica centers the power of migrants and other women from rural fields to Hollywood sets. Rooted in her farmworker family background in Ohio, Mónica fiercely combats workplace sexual violence, supports low-paid workers and immigrants, and fights for the recognition these overlooked individuals deserve.
She launched the first U.S. legal initiative to tackle gender discrimination against farmworker women, which she scaled into the Esperanza Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. This work was foundational to creating Justice for Migrant Women as a stand-alone non-profit organization. Her pivotal “Dear Sisters” letter in TIME magazine, written on behalf of farmworker women, has been credited with catalyzing the TIME’S UP movement.
In addition, she has been instrumental in building and leading the national Latina Equal Pay campaign since 2015 and helping to spearhead the creation of the “Survivors Agenda.” Mónica’s advocacy and influence have impacted important legislation, including critical bills like the BE HEARD Act, which provides more protection against sexual harassment, and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
Given the many projects, initiatives, and organizations she has founded or co-founded, Mónica is considered a serial social entrepreneur. Mónica co-founded Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, The Latinx House, and Poderistas. Her narrative-changing initiatives include Raizado Festival, a festival in Aspen, Colorado, that celebrates the cultural contributions of Latine leaders, The Bandana Project, and The Humans Who Feed Us, among others. Mónica has also actively been engaged in using film and other content to educate the community and shed light on pressing issues, from working as a part of the team on the film “Viva La Causa” while she was at the Southern Poverty Law Center to serving as an Executive Producer on the short films “Bibi,” and “El Tesoro” and co-writing “Elefanta,” an animated short film created by The Latinx House.
Mónica seamlessly bridges activism and storytelling. She earned degrees from Loyola University Chicago, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and Harvard Kennedy School. She holds accolades including the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, James Beard Leadership Award Winner, the Hispanic Heritage Award, TIME 100 Next Leader, FORBES Mexico’s 2018 100 Powerful Women List, GuadaLAjara Film Festival’s Arbol de la Vida Award Recipient of the Reconocimiento Alfonso García Robles 2020 from UNAM Mexico, QUIEN Magazine’s 2024 Quien 50 List, ADCOLOR’s Catalyst Award and the 2024 Anthem Awards, Gold Winner in the Human & Civil Rights – Nonprofit Leader, among others.
Chief Counsel, Arizona Civil Rights Division, Arizona Attorney General’s Office
Leslie Ross is the Chief Counsel of the Arizona Civil Rights Division (ACRD) in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Leslie’s legal career has been devoted to protecting individuals from unlawful discrimination and ensuring access to justice for all Arizonans. As Chief Counsel, Leslie oversees the work of the ACRD, which investigates, mediates, and enforces alleged violations of Arizona’s civil rights laws. Prior to rejoining the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in 2019, Leslie represented some of Arizona’s largest state agencies and litigated civil rights violations in state and federal court for private clients and as an Assistant Attorney General for ACRD. Outside of work, Leslie is a former Chair of the Arizona Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights and is currently President of the Booster Club for her child’s public High School.
Law Fellow, SEIU
Faride Sender is a Law Fellow at Service Employees International Union (SEIU). She supports campaigns involving security officers, airport workers, Fight for $15 and a Union, registered nurses, and immigration, working closely with organizing, research, and communications teams to provide legal support for workers fighting to improve their working conditions. Faride earned her J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and is committed to ensuring that all workers have a voice on the job and are treated with dignity and respect in the workplace. Before becoming a Law Fellow, Faride worked in SEIU’s legal department as an administrative assistant for nearly nine years and attended law school as an evening student while working full-time.
Director of Southwest Campaign Strategy, NELP
Vanessa Spinazola serves as the Director of Southwest Campaign Strategy for the National Employment Law Project, where she weaves her past experience as a legislative advocate for civil liberties in Nevada and on behalf of people with criminal records in Louisiana with her time as plaintiffs’ employment lawyer to advance worker justice in the Southwest. After surviving Hurricane Katrina, she co-founded a national network organizing thousands of law students to aid in disaster recovery and two employment law legal programs, recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars for recovery and rebuilding workers and obtaining the first U-Visas signed by a federal judge in the nation. She is a former public defender and chief of staff to a New Orleans City Councilmember and has served in leadership roles for a climate justice organization.
Attorney, Campaigns Coordinator, Northwest Workers’ Justice Project
Kate is an attorney at the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project in Portland, Oregon, where she represents workers in employment cases with a focus on injured worker retaliation. She also engages in state legislative and administrative advocacy to bring workers’ voices to policy conversations. Kate coordinates two policy groups: the Oregon Worker Power Table and Safe Jobs Oregon which focuses on worker safety. Before joining NWJP, Kate worked to fight wage theft within the day labor community at the Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project in Portland. Kate has served as a law clerk in a trial court in Manhattan and Chief of Staff to a New York City Council member.
Kate has a BA in Spanish Literature from Reed College and a JD from the City University of New York’s Public Interest Law School
Litigation Director, Jobs to Move America
Meredith Stewart is the Litigation Director for Jobs to Move America. Prior to joining JMA, Meredith was an attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center where she led impact litigation to expand the labor and civil rights of workers. She has represented workers in individual and class action lawsuits brought under various labor and employment, anti-retaliation, anti-trafficking, and civil rights laws. Meredith was lead counsel for SPLC on a civil rights case that won a landmark settlement awarding over $1 million to meatpacking workers detained in a workplace immigration raid. She was also counsel on a forced labor and discrimination case that resulted in an unprecedented $14 million jury verdict for workers recruited from India to help repair Gulf Coast oil rigs damaged during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Meredith has co-authored three reports on guest worker programs in the United States and has testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration about the same. Before becoming an attorney, Meredith was an organizing director with UNITE HERE.
Maxwell Ulin
Staff Attorney, Unite Here Local 11
Maxwell Ulin is a workers’ rights attorney working for UNITE HERE Local 11, a union representing some 32,000 hotel and food service workers in Arizona and Southern California at places like ASU, the Desert Diamond Arena, and the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown. As the union’s Arizona-based staff attorney, Maxwell heads up negotiations with multiple food-service employers in Arizona, including Aramark at ASU, and handles arbitration and litigation on behalf of workers and organizers in both Phoenix and Southern California. Prior to graduating Harvard Law School in 2023, Maxwell worked as an outreach staffer for farmworker legal aid in Tennessee and as an organizer in northern Mexico, where he helped to unionize Mexican auto and textile workers under the country’s recent labor law reforms.
General Counsel, SEIU
Steve Ury has served as General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union since 2023. He has been in the SEIU Legal Department since 2003 and previously served as Deputy General Counsel, Lead Counsel to the Healthcare Division, and Lead Counsel/Deputy Director of SEIU’s South/Southwest organizing project. Steve is a graduate of Yale University and NYU Law School. Before becoming a lawyer, he worked as an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas.
Partner, Katz Banks Kumin LLP
Ms. Westerman has represented employees from all walks of life, from delivery drivers to pharmaceutical executives to fast food workers, who have been subjected to illegal and unfair workplace practices, including sex and gender discrimination, race discrimination, disability discrimination, retaliation, and wage theft. She has litigated cases in state and federal court as well as in administrative proceedings before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She has also represented numerous employees in cases that resolved successfully and confidentially prior to litigation.
Ms. Westerman is a member of the Amicus Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association and has authored multiple amicus briefs in support of workers in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. She also volunteers with the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs Workers’ Rights Clinic.
Ms. Westerman was recognized as a Rising Star of the Plaintiffs Bar by the National Law Journal in 2021. She received her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, where she received the Dean’s Certificate for Special and Outstanding Service to the Law Center Community, and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Westerman served as a law clerk to the Honorable Russell F. Canan of the District of Columbia Superior Court.
Ms. Westerman is a member of the New York and District of Columbia bars.
Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Tulane Law
Mary Yanik directs the Tulane Immigrant Rights Clinic and serves as an Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Tulane Law School. She specializes in assisting immigrant workers, including victims of labor trafficking, and in defending constitutional rights of immigrants. Yanik previously worked at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, leading a law & organizing practice in support of community-directed campaigns for labor, migrant, and racial justice. She has represented dozens of immigrant workers in reporting labor abuse to federal labor agencies, including the immigrant whistleblower who complained of unsafe conditions at the now-collapsed Hard Rock Hotel site in New Orleans. She further helps immigrant workers seek permanent immigration status through U and T visa applications based on labor exploitation, as well as supporting clients in seeking temporary immigration protection when it was available through Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement. Mary received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2014 and, after law school, clerked for Judge David F. Hamilton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.