| Speakers |
| Monica Anderson MA Associate Director of Internet and Technology Research Pew Research Center Monica Anderson is associate director of research at Pew Research Center, primarily studying internet and technology issues. Much of her recent work has focused on the impact of the digital divide, the role of technology in the lives of teenagers, and activism in the age of social media. She has a master’s degree in media studies from Georgetown University, where her work focused on the intersection of race, politics and media. | |
| Manal Azzi PhD OSH Team Lead, Senior Occupational Safety and Health Specialist International Labour Organization Dr Manal Azzi is the Global Team Lead and Senior Specialist on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) at the International Labour Organization (ILO) based in Geneva, Switzerland. In her 17 years with the ILO, she has had the opportunity to supervise interventions around the world. Dr Azzi manages work on chemical safety and the environment, also on the prevention of communicable and non-communicable diseases, health promotion in the workplace including improved wellbeing, nutrition and the prevention of stress, psychosocial risks, violence and substance abuse in the world of work. She also coordinates the world day for safety and health at work campaign. Dr Azzi works on advancing OSH management systems and ILO OSH standards. Dr Azzi holds a PhD in Health Sciences and Policy (Faculty of Health & Medical Sciences-University of Surrey, UK), a masters in labour law, LLM (University of Leicester), a masters in nutrition, and BSc. in environmental and public health sciences (American University of Beirut), and a degree in biochemistry, human physiology and health education (University of Sydney). | |
| Cristina Banks PhD Associate Director, California Labor Lab University of California, Berkeley Dr. Banks is Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces, a global research center at the University of California, Berkeley whose purpose is to gather together all known science across disciplines regarding employee health and well-being and to translate findings into a new organizational template for healthy workplaces. In collaboration with Dr. Sheldon Zedeck, Dr. Banks leads a team of 30 researchers spanning multiple disciplines and 20+ affiliates in collecting and integrating known scientific findings and creating new research programs to advance our knowledge in this area. Dr. Banks is also a Senior Lecturer at the Haas School of Business where she has taught Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management for 30 years. | |
| Rene Bayardo Government Relations Director SEIU California Rene Bayardo currently serves as the Director of Government Relations for SEIU California, which represents 700,000 workers. Bayardo joined SEIU California in 2011 as a legislative advocate having previously worked as staff in the California legislature. Bayardo helped lead the fight against wage theft including the passage of SB 588 (De León) in 2015, which gave workers stronger tools to hold employers accountable for paying stolen wages. Bayardo is a past board member of the Center for Workers’ Rights, which strives to improve working conditions, reduce barriers to securing employment, and remedy workplace injustices for low-wage workers and their families in the greater Sacramento area. A native of Stockon, California, Bayardo is a devoted father to two children. | |
| Emma Goldberg MPhil Emma Goldberg is the future of work reporter at the New York Times. She has been recognized by the Newswomen's Club of New York, the New York Press Club and the Sidney Hillman Foundation. She is the author of Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic. | |
| Jacob S. Hacker PhD Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science Yale University Jacob S. Hacker is Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science and a resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. An expert on American politics and policy, he is the author or co-author of more than a half-dozen books, numerous journal articles, and a wide range of popular writings. The second edition of his 2006 book, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, was published in 2019. His latest book, written with Paul Pierson, is Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality (2020). A regular policy advisor and expert commentator, Professor Hacker is known for his writings on health policy, especially his development of the so-called public option. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he received the Robert Ball Award of the National Academy of Social Science in 2020 and was inducted into the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2021. | |
| Kristen Harknett PhD Professor University of California, San Francisco Kristen Harknett is a Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She was previously an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. Her research focuses on how policies and working conditions impact the lives of low-income families. With Daniel Schneider, Kristen co-directs The Shift Project, which has collected survey data from over 100,000 service sector workers over the past five years. The Shift Project fills a gap in available data on precarious job conditions – including unstable and unpredictable work schedules; and workplace safety, surveillance, and automation – and their consequences for worker health, economic security, and parenting. Her Shift Project research with co-PI Daniel Schneider has shown that unstable and unpredictable work schedules have negative effects on worker health, increase the risk of material hardship, and lead to instability in young children’s care arrangements. This work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Sociological Methods and Research, Health Affairs, Social Forces, and Social Problems. | |
| John Howard MD Director National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), CDC John Howard is the Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | |
| Assemblymember Ash Kalra JD California State Assembly Assemblymember Ash Kalra represents California’s 27th District, which encompasses approximately half of San José and includes all of downtown. He was first elected in 2016, becoming the first Indian American to serve in the California Legislature in state history, and was re-elected to his third term in 2020. Assemblymember Kalra is the Chair of the Committee on Labor and Employment and also serves as a member on the Housing and Community Development, Judiciary, Transportation, and Water, Parks, and Wildlife committees. Last year, he was elected by his Assembly colleagues to serve as Chair of the California Legislative Progressive Caucus to help guide a strategic, thoughtful approach to advancing a compassionate, inclusive agenda for Californians. He previously served on the San José City Council for eight years and was formerly a Deputy Public Defender for Santa Clara County for 11 years, representing clients in dozens of felony jury trials. As a public defender, he represented indigent clients in both felony and misdemeanor matters, and a majority of his time was spent in drug treatment court where clients were given the opportunity to complete a rehabilitation program and turn their lives around. | |
| Christina Maslach PhD Professor of Psychology, Emerita University of California, Berkeley Christina Maslach, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology (Emerita) and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her A.B. from Harvard, and her Ph.D. from Stanford. She is best known as the pioneering researcher on job burnout, producing the standard assessment tool (the Maslach Burnout Inventory, MBI), books, and award-winning articles. Her latest book is The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with their Jobs (2022). The impact of her work is reflected by the official recognition of burnout, as an occupational phenomenon with health consequences, by the World Health Organization in 2019. In 2020, she received the award for Scientific Reviewing, for her writing on burnout, from the National Academy of Sciences. Among her other honors are Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1991 -- "For groundbreaking work on the application of social psychology to contemporary problems"), Professor of the Year (1997), and her inclusion in Business Insider’s 2021 list of the top 100 people transforming business. | |
| Beth A. Ross Esq. Attorney Beth A. Ross, Esq. is a labor and employment law practitioner with 35 years experience providing full-service representation to labor organizations, non-profits, and working people in the fields of traditional labor and employment law. She was a partner at Leonard Carder LLP, where she practiced plaintiff side employment law, and served as lead trial counsel in numerous groundbreaking wage and hour matters with special focus on independent contractor misclassification. She has also taught as as Adjunct Professor at UC Hastings and Stanford University, and is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law and Wesleyan University. | |
| Victor Rubin MCP, PhD Senior Fellow PolicyLink Victor Rubin is a Senior Fellow and former Vice President for Research at PolicyLink, a national nonprofit institute advancing economic and racial equity through policy change. He has been an urban planning researcher, teacher, and consultant for 40 years. He led the research and documentation about ArtPlace America’s Community Development Investments and was a coauthor of Creating Healthy Communities through Cross-Sector Collaboration (2019, University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine/ArtPlace America) and the guest editor of the November 2019 special issue of the Community Development Innovation Review on arts and culture strategies. He coauthored the 2018 PolicyLink report for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Counting a Diverse Nation: Disaggregating Data on Race and Ethnicity to Advance a Culture of Health. He has been an advisor to the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Architects and other organizations on health and the built environment and on social equity. Victor joined PolicyLink in 2000 after serving as Director of the HUD Office of University Partnerships. He is an emeritus member of the California Planning Roundtable and was formerly Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, the department where he earned his MCP (1975) and PhD. (1986.) He currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Center for Community Engagement of the University of California, San Francisco and the National Advisory Council for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program. | |
| Daniel Schneider PhD Professor of Public Policy and Sociology Harvard University Daniel Schneider is Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Danny received his PhD from Princeton University in Sociology and Social Policy in 2012 and then completed a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Policy Research at Berkeley. He was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Berkeley between 2012-2020. His research focuses on family demography, inequality, and precarious employment. Danny is currently co-director of the Shift Project and is a W.T. Grant Foundation Faculty Research Scholar. https://scholar.harvard.edu/dschneider | |
| Laura Stock MPH Director Labor Occupational Health Program Laura Stock is the director of the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP). She directs and administers LOHP’s programs providing training, research support, materials development and technical assistance for workers, employers, health professionals, and the general public. She also provide direction to staff on translating research findings to practice and to public policy (R2P2P). In her over thirty years at LOHP, she has developed various training programs and educational materials on occupational safety and health issues and have provided technical assistance and consultation to workers, unions, joint labor/management committees, employers, policymakers and others on how to set up comprehensive and effective health and safety programs. Ms. Stock is currently principle investigator on a number of statewide worker education initiatives including WOSHTEP (Worker Occupational Safety and Health Training and Education Program), and is a member of the Cal/OSHA Standards Board, charged with developing occupational safety regulations for the state of CA as well as the NIOSH/ NORA Committees on Healthy Work Design. | |
| John Swartzberg MD Clinical Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Emeriti Academy University of California, Berkeley John Swartzberg is Clinical Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Emeriti Academy, University of California, Berkeley. He is a faculty member of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology division and chairs the editorial board that produces the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter and UC Berkeley’s Health After 50 Newsletter. | |
| Mariana Viturro Deputy Director National Domestic Workers Alliance Mariana Viturro is the Deputy Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). She has been organizing low wage workers in California and nationally for more than 20 years. She is a dedicated labor and social justice leader and strategist with deep expertise in the care sector and future of work policy solutions. For the past 8 years as Deputy Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Mariana has brought a clear vision to achieving worker voice for one of the most vulnerable, fastest growing workforces in our economy today. In a rapidly changing economic and political environment, she is charting a path towards an equitable and just future of work for women. | |
| Edward Yelin PhD Edward A Dickson Emeritus Professor; Director, California Labor Laboratory University of California, San Francisco Dr. Yelin is the Principal Investigator of the California Labor Laboratory, a NIOSH Center of Excellence for Total Worker Health. He has been researching the relationship of employment to health for four decades, with a focus on the relationship of severe chronic disease, particularly autoimmune disease on employment. He has also written extensively on how changes in employment affect the work of those with chronic diseases, at the micro level on how social and physical demands of work interact with severe impairment and at the macro level on how the transformation from the manufacturing to services economy affects the chronically ill. Dr. Yelin is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and a winner of multiple awards from the American College of Rheumatology, including the Distinguished Scholar Award. He is currently the Edward A Dickson Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at UCSF. | |
