Staff
Lane Windham, Co-Director
Georgetown University | 202-687-0492 | lw36[at]georgetown.edu
Lane Windham, Ph.D. is Co-Director of WILL Empower and Co-Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. She is author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (UNC Press, 2017), winner of the 2018 David Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians (OAH). Windham spent nearly twenty years working in the union movement, including as a union organizer with clothing and textile workers in the U.S. South and as director of media outreach for the national AFL-CIO. She is a frequent commenter in the media, and has published widely including in The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Hill, the Baltimore Sun, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, In These Times, and elsewhere. She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in U.S. history from the University of Maryland and a B.A. from Duke University.
Sheri Davis, Co-Director
Rutgers University | sdd123[at]smlr.rutgers.edu
Sheri Davis co-directs the WILL Empower (We Innovate Labor Leadership) program, a joint initiative with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University with Dr. Lane Windham. As Co-director for WILL Empower, Davis hosts two Cohorts of Learning for women, nonbinary, and trans leaders, one focuses on emerging leaders and one for those in executive leadership roles. She is the Executive Director with the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) and has spent the past 9 years building an incredible network of labor leaders across the country and the world. She is also Associate Professor of Professional Practice with the Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER) Department in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University (SMLR). Davis also co-edited Racial Reckoning in Industrial Relations: Storytelling from Within.
Patricia Muñoz, Senior Program Coordinator
Rutgers University | patmunoz@rutgers.edu
Patricia Munoz is the Senior Program Coordinator of the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) at Rutgers University. Patricia has more than 30 years of experience in the Media & Communication field. Her career had taken her from her native Argentina to Europe and the US. An expert in visual communication, Patricia sees the challenge of the new languages in social media as an opportunity to connect and increase our global knowledge. Patricia believes that human communication is entering a new era, with technology and the always existing human need for contact supporting each other. Patricia’s academic achievements include a post-degree investigation at Navarra University in Pamplona, Spain, and she was named by her hometown, Mar del Plata, as an Honorific Ambassador. She is married to Sebastian Nieto, an Argentinean chef, and has two daughters: Sophie and Emily.
Co-Founders Emeritus
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
Distinguished Professor Marilyn Sneiderman is the founder and former Executive Director of 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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