Staff
Lane Windham, Co-Director
Georgetown University | 202-687-0492 | lw36[at]georgetown.edu
Lane Windham is an experienced organizer, educator, historian and activist. Her new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door, focuses on union organizing in the 1970s. Lane spent nearly twenty years working in the union movement, including as media outreach director and specialist for the national AFL-CIO from 1998 to 2009. She organized unions among clothing and textile workers throughout the South in the 1990s. Lane’s current research focuses on how working people can best build power within today’s shifting economy. She holds a Ph.D. in U.S. history and has published widely on issues of class, race, gender, economic justice and the future of work. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) and is on the Advisory Committee of Labor and Research Action Network (LRAN).
Sheri Davis-Faulkner, Co-Director
Rutgers University | sdd123[at]smlr.rutgers.edu
Sheri Davis-Faulkner is the Senior Program Director for WILL Empower with the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. She previously served as the Director for the Westside Communities Alliance in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. There she built an alliance between the campus community and a network of community partners on Atlanta’s westside. Davis-Faulkner also worked with SEIU District 82, Justice for Janitors Campaign, as a Union Representative for university workers as well as a Grievance and Arbitrations Coordinator. She successfully led collective bargaining campaigns at George Washington University and Howard University and served as a Steering Committee member for DC Jobs with Justice.
A native Atlantan and interdisciplinary scholar-activist, Davis-Faulkner completed her doctorate in American Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. She also holds a M.A. in Women’s Studies from The Ohio State University and B.A. in Psychology and Political Science from Spelman College. Her entry point into the labor movement was as a graduate student activist and leader at OSU during the CWA Local 4501 strike and thirty-day sit-in in 2000. This led to an opportunity working on the Global Justice Campaign as an intern in the Field Mobilization division of the National AFL-CIO.
Joseph A. McCartin
Georgetown University | jam6[at]georgetown.edu
Joseph A. McCartin is a historian of the U.S. labor movement and 20th century U.S. social and political history. He directs the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor (KILWP) and is a Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he has taught since 1999. His research focuses on the intersection of labor organization, politics, and public policy. His first book, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, won the 1999 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. His most recent book, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America, examines the origins and implications of the 1981 PATCO strike of air traffic controllers. It won the Richard A. Lester Award for the Outstanding Book on Industrial Relations and Labor Economics published in 2011. His current research explores the impact of public sector labor organization on politics, government, and private sector labor relations. He is a member of the steering committee of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice (CSWJ), the editorial committee of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, the board of DC Jobs with Justice (DC JwJ), and the board of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ).
Marilyn Sneiderman
Rutgers University | marilyn.sneiderman[at]rutgers.edu
Professor Marilyn Sneiderman directs the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) at Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations, bringing with her 30 years of experience in labor, community, faith based, immigrant and racial justice organizing, as well as extensive experience in managing large staffs and managing intensive organizational change work.
For 10 years, Sneiderman directed the National AFL-CIO’s Department of Field Mobilization, where she helped launch the national “Union Cities” initiative. The campaign focused on increasing the capacity to support and win organizing, political and policy campaigns in states and cities throughout the country. Working with the AFL-CIO’s International Unions, State Federations, and Central Labor Councils, the program was designed to unite community, union, religious, and civil/immigrant rights groups to build local movements to fight for social and economic justice in states and cities.
Sneiderman most recently served as Executive Director of AVODAH, a national Jewish social justice organization where she expanded the scope, impact and budget of the organization. Prior to her work at the AFL-CIO, she served as education director at the Teamsters International Union and on the senior faculty of the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, where she focused on leadership training, civil and women’s rights, and labor/community organizing. She also served on the faculty at Georgetown Law School and was the community organizer at AFSCME.
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