ULI Grad Valeria Treves to Head AFL-CIO Fund for Labor Innovation

Valeria Treves, a graduate of the 2014 class of the New York State AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute, was recently appointed the first full time director of the Labor Innovations for the 21st Century (LIFT) Fund.

A seasoned immigrant and worker rights advocate, Valeria was previously the Executive Director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE), one of the leading worker centers in NYC. At NICE, Valeria developed innovative policy, organizing and workforce strategies to build the power of day laborers and domestic workers. She has been a board member of National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and an anchor affiliate for the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA).

“I cannot underestimate the impact that the Union Leadership Institute has had on my professional life and on my ability to effect change for workers,” says Valeria. “The skills and relationships that I gained through the Institute helped me secure important victories at NICE and it also made me a stronger and more prepared candidate for my new endeavor as Director of the LIFT Fund.”

The LIFT Fund is a unique collaboration between philanthropy, the AFL CIO, worker centers and academics. It was seeded in 2012 to support and uplift innovation, experimentation and field level learning around new strategies of worker organizing and effective collaboration between worker centers and labor unions.

“While at the Institute, Valeria demonstrated an impressive ability to draw connections across social movements and she offered sharp insights into the political and economic conditions faced by migrant workers,” said ULI Co-Director Gene Carroll.  “We are thrilled that she has been appointed to direct the innovative work of the LIFT Fund.”

The LIFT Fund has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to 38 worker center-union collaborations experimenting with new forms of worker organizing, new frameworks for collective bargaining, promising models of worker-driven enforcement, and strategies that retool workforce development pipelines and training to build power for workers in key industries.

The NYS AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute is an intensive, one-year, executive-level training program for current leaders and top staff in New York’s unions and other worker-focused organizations who are already in significant positions of leadership. Since its launch in 2001, the Institute has graduated 375 leaders.