People

Riya Desai

Riya Desai is a first-year medical student in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. Before entering medical school, she worked at the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatics on projects examining the impacts of place-based drivers of health disparities. She currently organizes with the #StopSanQuentinOutbreakCoalition and has helped develop and organize a public health working group within the coalition to demand large scale releases of incarcerated people. She is committed to integrating public health and organizing as mechanisms for structural change.  

Abby Lawlor

Abby Lawlor is a second year JD candidate at Berkeley Law studying labor and employment law. Abby is working with Senior Policy Fellow Jane McAlevey conducting research related to big and open collective bargaining. She came to UC Berkeley after a decade of worker and political organizing and strategic research with UNITE HERE.

Adrian Leong

Adrian Leong is a first-year Master of Public Policy Student at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. He is on the Low Wage Work team at the Labor Center. Previously, he worked as a Community Organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco.

Jessica Muñoz

Graduate Student Researcher

Jessica Muñoz is a current Master of Public Policy student at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. Jessica is working on the Low-Wage Work team on COVID-related research and on the Labor-Management Partnerships Program.

Michael Obuchi

Michael Obuchi is a second year law student at Berkeley Law studying employment law and labor. Michael is working on the Technology and Work team. He previously worked as a researcher with the SHIFT project formerly housed at Berkeley and obtained a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies from UC Berkeley.   

Jon Hiatt

Visiting Fellow

Jon Hiatt is a union lawyer, who currently serves as Of Counsel to Solidarity Center, based in Washington D.C., while also a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Previously, Hiatt was General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union from 1987-1996, General Counsel of the AFL-CIO from 1996-2009, and then Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka from 2009-2017.

John Logan

Visiting Fellow

John Logan, Ph.D., U.S. labor history, University of California, Davis, is an expert on the anti-union industry and anti-union legislation in the U.S., and comparative labor issues, particularly how multinational companies treat employees and unions differently in the U.S. compared to European countries.

Katie Quan

Senior Fellow

Katie Quan is a senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Formerly chair and associate chair of the Labor Center, she retired in 2016, but continues to work at the center on special projects involving research on global labor strategies and executive education for union leaders. In 2010 she co-founded the International Center for Joint Labor Research at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, and was its co-director for four years. In 2014 she received a Fulbright grant to study the apparel supply chain in China at Peking University. Katie has recently consulted with the International Labour Organization on industrial relations reform in Vietnam.

Prior to joining the staff of the Labor Center in 1998, Katie Quan was a seamstress, organizer, and international vice-president with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and its successor, UNITE. In 1992 she chaired the founding convention of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. She has volunteered as a board director for many labor organizations, including the Worker Rights Consortium, the International Labor Rights Forum, Sweatshop Watch, and the Labor Project for Working Families. Her organizing experiences were documented by Ruth Milkman in Women in Unions (Cornell ILR Press, 1993), and by Xiaolan Bao in Holding Up More than Half the Sky (University of Illinois Press 2001).