Speakers & Workshop Hosts

Interested in speaking at the Peggy Browning Fund's National Law Students Workers' Rights Conference? Reach out to info@peggybrowningfund.org to join for next year!
 

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 a Board Member and Secretary for the Peggy Browning Fund.

Lucas Aubrey | A partner at 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.

Adam Bellotti | Adam Bellotti (he/his) is a member at Bredhoff & Kaiser, where his practices transactional work and dispute resolution for labor unions and associated employee benefit funds. Adam serves as counsel to public and private-sector labor unions, including the United States Women’s National Team Players Association, a leading advocate for women’s soccer players. As labor counsel, Adam negotiates collective-bargaining agreements, represents unions at all steps of the grievance and arbitration process, and advises unions on their compliance obligations under state and federal laws. He has litigated cases arising under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, the National Labor Relations Act and Labor Management Relations Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, state and federal employment-discrimination laws, and a variety of state tort and contract laws.

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.

Kyle Campbell | Kyle Campbell is Associate General Counsel for AFSCME. Kyle was first exposed to the labor movement in college while working on a local minimum wage campaign. After spending a summer as an organizer and Union Scholar with AFSCME Council 13, he knew there was no question he would dedicate his life to the labor movement. In law school, he was elected president of the Labor and Employment Law Society, and spent his first summer serving indigent clients in the Florida panhandle through Equal Justice Works’ Rural Summer Legal Corps. He spent the spring semester of his 2L year as a full-time extern in AFSCME’s General Counsel’s office in Washington, D.C., where he learned invaluable skills and strengthened his commitment to the movement. Following a Peggy Browning fellowship in Los Angeles and several roles with workers’ rights organizations in Alabama, Kyle returned to AFSCME after his law school graduation.

Bridget Daley | Bridget Daley dedicated her life to the advancement of the labor movement working at SEIU for the last 10 years. As an organizer for SEIU on the Fight for $15 campaign starting in 2014 she organized some of the most vulnerable workers working in the fast food industry. Currently she’s a Lead Organizer at SEIU 32BJ in the airport worker division. She has organized low wage workers across the east coast and more recently has worked on campaigns in difficult southern states like Virginia and Florida.

Antonia Domingo | Antonia Domingo is an Assistant General Counsel for the United Steelworkers. She works closely with Union staff and locals on a variety of collective bargaining and organizing issues. She graduated from Harvard Law School in 2015. As a law student, Antonia was a Peggy Browning Fellow at Greater Boston Legal Services and an AFL-CIO Law Student Union Summer Intern at United Food & Commercial Workers Local 75.

Samantha Dulaney | Samantha Dulaney is General Counsel at IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical State Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States. Previously she served as the first In-House Counsel for IATSE. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.

Justin Falcinelli | Justin Falcinelli was a Clemson offensive lineman for the 2014 -2018 seasons. He was a  two-year starter, first team all-ACC center, honorable mention all-American, two-time College Fooball Playoff National Champion, and receiver of Clemson’s top Male Scholar Athlete award in 2018. He received a B.S. in management in 2017 and completed his MBA at Clemson in 2018 during his senior season. He is now a Data Insight Analyst in Baltimore Maryland with 3 years experience in data visualization and cost analysis. Justin has developed multiple program management, financial, and metric reporting dashboards for the FAA and continues to develop them with Northrop Grumman. 

Terri Ellen Gerstein | Terri Gerstein is the Director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and a Just Economy, and also a Fellow at the Center. She recently completed an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government fellowship. Previously, she worked for over 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, including as the Labor Bureau Chief for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, and as a Deputy Commissioner in the New York State Department of Labor. Before her government service, Terri was a nonprofit lawyer in Miami, Florida, where she represented immigrant workers and also co-hosted a Spanish language radio show on workers’ rights.

Matt Ginsburg | Matt Ginsburg is General Counsel of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Matt’s work at the AFL-CIO has focused on traditional labor law, new forms of worker representation, and the rights of immigrant workers, as well as all aspects of the governance of the federation. He has regularly briefed and argued cases on behalf of unions and workers in the federal courts of appeals and presented the AFL-CIO’s view on important workplace legal issues to the Supreme Court in amicus curiae briefs. Matt is a graduate of the New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. He clerked for Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Matt was a union organizer for several years prior to becoming a lawyer.

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.

Ian Hayes | Ian Hayes practices in all areas of labor and employment law. Before law school, Ian was an organizer with Service Employees International Union. Ian’s practice includes advising and representing unions in all matters, most recently the Starbucks Workers United campaign and coordinating the campaign’s legal work. He regularly represents individual and groups of workers in wage and hour litigation, representing employees in discrimination and harassment actions, and representing employee benefit funds. He has extensive experience practicing at state and federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the New York Public Employment Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the New York Division of Human Rights.

Michelle Hejduk | Michelle is a six-year Starbucks partner and leader from the third Starbucks to officially organize a union and join Starbucks Workers United. Since then, she has gone on to assist in organizing Starbucks stores across the country, while also helping existing unionized stores maintain their strength.

Richard Hooker | Richard Hooker Jr. is the Secretary-Treasurer and Principal Officer of the Teamsters Local 623, a 115-year-old union which represents warehouse workers, UPS package-car drivers, Greyhound ticket and baggage agents among others. A 24-year Teamster, Mr. Hooker is the first African American principal officer of Teamsters Local 623, where is he also Chairman of the Teamsters Local 623 legal service fund and, for the first time in history, co-chair of the Teamsters Local 623 grievance panel. In addition, Mr. Hooker serves as a vice president on the Philadelphia AFL-CIO board.

George M. Kraw | George M. Kraw is a founding member of the Kraw Law Group and specializes in the representation of Taft-Hartley benefit funds. He is a former union representative to the Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He belongs to the International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists and is a former chair of the CEBS Committee of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. He frequently writes on employee benefit and other law related matters, and has been a contributor to Bloomberg BNA, the National Law Journal, Benefits Magazine, American Lawyer, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and the San Francisco Recorder, among other media. He is a member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild.

Raphael Shannon Kraw | Raphael Shannon Kraw has been representing Taft-Hartley benefit trusts and many other union–related organizations since 1978, with a focus on helping clients improve and protect benefits for working people. Her areas of expertise embrace all aspects of client entities’ structure and operations, and include; drafting trust and plan documents, ERISA qualified pension plans, withdrawal liability, and plan mergers and terminations, all federal and state law compliance issues for health and welfare plans, governmental agency investigations, audits, and litigation, benefit claims litigation, and fiduciary litigation both for plaintiffs and defendants. She has special expertise in dealing with the problems of financially troubled plans, and in addressing issues arising from the changes in plan providers. Ms. Kraw spent her first 36 years of practice at McCarthy, Johnson & Miller Law Corp in San Francisco.

Graham Lake | Graham Lake is the Chief of the Workers’ Rights and Antifraud Section at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. He supervises a broad range of workers’ rights cases and investigations to vindicate the rights of District workers and to hold employers accountable for violations of District law, including wage theft, worker misclassification, and unlawful denials of sick leave. Mr. Lake previously was a trial attorney doing consumer protection work for the office. Before joining the Office of the Attorney General, Mr. Lake worked for several years at Bredhoff & Kaiser, PLLC, where he represented local and national unions, as well as multiemployer pension plans, in a variety of litigation in state and federal court.

Geoffrey Leonard | Geoffrey Leonard is 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. Before Levy Ratner, he worked at 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 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.

Jerry Mullery | Gerald J. Mullery was appointed Deputy Secretary for Compensation and Insurance in February 2023 by Secretary of the Department of Labor & Industry, Nancy Walker. For twelve years preceding his appointment, Deputy Secretary Mullery was a State Representative in Pennsylvania’s General Assembly representing 65,000 constituents in the 119th Legislative District. Deputy Secretary Mullery held multiple leadership positions in the House of Representatives including Democratic Chair of the House Labor & Industry and Ethics Committees. He started and ended his legal career representing the injured at the firm of O’Connor Law in Frackville. Additionally, he was in-house counsel for Lackawanna Insurance Group in Wilkes-Barre for several years prior to opening his own firm of Kasper & Mullery in Kingston. Throughout his twenty-five years as an attorney, Deputy Secretary Mullery litigated claims on behalf of claimants, insurance companies, self-insured employers, and third party administrators. He is a graduate of King’s College and the Duquesne University School of Law.

Ingrid Nava | Ingrid Nava is Associate General Counsel for SEIU Local 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.

Zoe Palitz | Zoe Palitz is a partner at Altshuler Berzon LLP in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School and served as a law clerk to Judge Marsha S. Berzon of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and to Margaret M. Morrow of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Zoe’s practice consists primarily of representing local and international labor unions in federal and state court litigation, administrative proceedings, arbitrations, collective bargaining, and advice matters. She serves as General Counsel to private and public sector labor unions in California and across the country including the Major League Baseball Umpires Association, unions in the building and construction trades, and unions representing security guards and public defenders. Since 2019, she has served as an advisor to the Executive Committee of the Labor & Employment Section of the California Lawyers Association..

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.

Anthony R. Segall | Tony has practiced labor and employment law exclusively since 1981, and joined in founding the firm Rothner, Segall & Greenstone in 1992. Tony’s areas of expertise include entertainment industry labor relations, construction industry labor law, and legislative advocacy and drafting. He frequently testifies before legislative committees regarding pending legislation, and has participated in the drafting of numerous public sector collective bargaining statutes, including those covering trial court employees, home health care workers, and subsidized childcare providers. Since 2005, Tony has served as General Counsel to Writers Guild of America, West, Inc.

Jay Smith | A shareholder in Gilbert & Sackman, Jay has represented labor unions and their members for over 35 years. Previously a partner at Cooper, Mitch, Crawford, Kuykendall & Whatley, 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, IATSE Locals B-192 and 768, AGVA, 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.

Kim Teplitzsky | Kim Teplitzky is the Director of Strategic Campaigns for the United Steelworkers where she leads a team working on contract campaigns, strikes and lockouts across a range of sectors. She has worked on numerous large-scale labor disputes and campaigns including a national oil refinery strike, disputes at specialty steel producer ATI, Honeywell, Westrock, and the current nurse’s strike at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, as well as contract campaigns at major corporations including US Steel, Georgia Pacific, Bridgestone and Kaiser Permanente. 

Devki Virk | Devki Virk joined the Wes Moore-Aruna Miller Administration in Maryland in May 2023 as Commissioner of Labor & Industry, a role that oversees the Maryland Occupational Health and Safety Administration (a full state plan), and enforcement of the State’s wage and hour laws, including minimum wage and overtime; sick leave; standards for State contractors under prevailing wage and living wage laws; and worker misclassification. Before joining the Administration, Virk was a union-side lawyer at the Washington, D.C. firm of Bredhoff & Kaiser, P.L.L.C., where she represented both local and international unions in many different sectors in federal, state, and administrative litigation, collective bargaining, internal matters, and day to day advice. She graduated from University of Illinois College of Law, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago.

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.

Melissa S. Woods | Melissa S. Woods is a Partner with the New York law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon who focuses on negotiating and litigating labor and employment law matters on behalf of unions and individual employees, and represents unions in employer bankruptcy proceedings. Melissa leads the firm’s harassment/discrimination prevention and DEI practice, where she shares her extensive experience investigating allegations of discrimination and harassment, providing legal and strategic advice on policy matters and workplace culture, and creating and conducting discrimination and harassment prevention, implicit bias and racial sensitivity trainings.

Watch for ongoing updates. This list is being updated as we confirm.