Professional Experience:
I have served at the helm over multiple domestic NGOs (within the U.S), establishing stability and growth while always taking a mission-driven driven approach to enacting lasting change. This change has taken the form of higher wages and the recovery of wage stolen for hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers, justice for victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, and discrimination, greater access to government institutions and funding for immigrant and other marginalized populations, and in my role as Deputy Commissioner at NYSDOL numerous new laws and policies advancing the human rights of entire communities throughout the state. I have always placed a great premium on a partnership approach toward achieving progress and to that end have led multiple coalitions that brough together government agencies, labor unions, community-based organizations, legal service providers, and other stakeholders to maximize the impact of our collective efforts. Through the pandemic, in my leadership role in State Government, I stood up and oversaw major operations geared at protecting workers' safety and health at the workplace--my team conducted over 55,000 investigations in this realm alone. Perhaps the most significant achievement of my career, in recent months I executed the historic $2B Excluded Workers Fund program (details in section below) and a related grants program to provide support to over 70 community-based organizations statewide. All told, through my NGO management and governmental pursuits and accomplishments, institutions that I have led impacted the lives of literally millions of individuals and protected them from exploitation and abuse.