Experience:

Attorney & Owner | Woodhead’s Law Practice | August 2024 - Present

• Counsels clients on compliance with international labor laws, standards, and norms.

• Assists clients with human rights due diligence.

Founder & Principal | Enterprise for Humankind | August 2024 - Present

• Leads consulting firm aimed at providing discreet support to entrepreneurs, start ups, brands, and companies on business and human rights including global labor standards.

• Conducts investigations, crafts risk mitigation and remediation strategies, provides strategic advice, manages crises, builds custom training, and more.

Senior International Labor Advisor for Central America Initiatives | Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), United States Department of Labor (USDOL) | January 2021 - June 2024

• Lead civil servant for the U.S. Department of Labor’s work to infuse human rights into foreign, trade, and development policy in Central America.

• Represented the USDOL to the White House on all matters pertaining to Central America.  

• Advised private sector actors on improving human rights conditions across supply chains.

• Imagined, wrote, and persuaded the adoption of the labor pillar of the Biden-Harris Administration Strategy to Address the Root Causes of Migration in Central America and the Good Governance Good Jobs Declaration.

• Coordinated 60 staff devoted part-time to these efforts with dotted line authority to make sure that all requests from the White House on Central America were timely and quality fulfilled.

• Spearheaded events including a Labor & Gender Delegation and virtual Labor Roundtables to obtain insights and perspectives of 75+ civil society organizations to inform the labor rights aspects of the Root Causes work.

Senior International Labor Advisor for Trade Policy | Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA), ILAB/USDOL | November 2017 – January 2021

• Led several multi-disciplinary teams to design and implement creative solutions to business and human rights problems. 

• Award-winning leader for multiple successful high-priority initiatives that advanced global labor standards concretely for workers and companies.

• Regularly advised high-level actors (private, public, and NGO sectors) on business and human rights issues. 

• Regularly led compliance and social responsibility programming, e.g. building capacity for unions, companies, and governments to improve occupational safety and health; data-driven decision making for senior leaders and decision-makers; mediation and conciliation; labor law compliance during COVID-19.

• Represented ILAB to domestic stakeholders including unions, businesses, academics, advocacy groups, Congress, the media, and the general public.  

• Led U.S. Government delegations to Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to promote global labor standards. Seamlessly adapted to different audiences’ interests, knowledge, needs, and perspectives when meeting with cabinet officials, business representatives, factory and farm workers, and human rights, labor and women’s empowerment organizations; built trusted relationships across Latin America and leveraged those relationships to influence others towards positive outcomes.

• Represented USDOL to other U.S. government agencies to promote inclusion of global labor standards in government-wide initiatives while balancing resource constraints and competing priorities. 

Interim Chief | Monitoring and Enforcement of Trade Agreements (META) Division, OTLA/ ILAB/USDOL | February 2018 – June 2018; November 2021 – April 2022; September 2023 - April 2024

• Managed high-performing team with employees based worldwide charged with monitoring compliance with the labor provisions of free trade agreements; developing and implementing strategies to engage governments, employers, and civil society to improve labor conditions and advance innovative solutions to labor challenges; advising leadership, sister agencies, and program implementers on country context and the relevance of labor policy to foreign policy; and serving as U.S. government experts on labor. 

• Hired, onboarded, trained, and mentored permanent staff and interns with an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, servant leadership, and long-term professional growth.

• Led strategic planning, budgeting, and performance measurement for the team; developed innovations in work strategies to improve access for stakeholders, sustainability of efforts, and office morale.

International Labor Advisor for Trade Policy | META/OTLA/ILAB/USDOL | October 2014 – November 2017

• Imagined, pitched, and led negotiation and oversight of the historic U.S.-Honduras Labor Rights Monitoring and Action Plan, the only ESG/S initiative under the labor chapter of a free trade agreement with the public backing of all stakeholders, sustainable and measurable outcomes, and built-in tripartite dialogue.

• Developed deep expertise and trusted networks on public policies related to labor rights in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru.  

Political Officer for Labor and Human Rights | United States Department of State, Embassy Tegucigalpa, Honduras | March 2014 – October 2014

• Invited by the Ambassador to perform a special assignment at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa. 

• Represented the U.S. government in local labor, employment, and human rights engagements. 

• Served as the Mission’s labor and employment expert to integrate labor equities into existing workstreams. 

Presidential Management Fellow | META/OTLA/ILAB/USDOL | April 2012 – March 2014

• Led investigation of a comprehensive complaint against the Government of Honduras under the Labor Chapter of the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement alleging that the government failed to enforce labor laws regarding freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, the minimum age for the employment of children and the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, and acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health in the apparel, textile, and auto parts manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation and shipping sectors. 

• Interviewed over 1,000 workers in Spanish, reviewed official documents, conducted legal analysis, and wrote the most authoritative and comprehensive report in decades documenting labor conditions in Honduras and making recommendations to the government for improvements.

Education:

• Juris Doctor 

  • Washington College of Law, American University, 2011.

• Master of Arts in International Affairs, concentration in International Development Policy 

  • School of International Service, American University, 2011.

• Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Political Science, minor in Regional Development

  • University of Arizona, 2007.