IRLE Experts

IRLE’s staff are nationally-recognized experts in low-wage labor, the future of work, the gig economy, immigrant workers, domestic employers, Black workers, workers and learners, labor history, labor unions, workplace occupational safety and health, human resources, among other areas of work. The IRLE also houses the UCLA Labor Studies academic program, the first major of its kind at the University of California.

For press and media interviews please contact, IRLE’s communications specialist, Willa Needham, willaneedham@ucla.edu.

To contact UCLA Labor Center staff, visit the Labor Center’s media experts page.

Tobias Higbie

IRLE Director, Professor of History and Labor Studies 

Areas of expertise: Labor and social movement history; immigrant workers and labor unions; Los Angeles hotel, janitorial and garment worker unions; social movement education; and public history

Kevin Riley

UCLA Labor and Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) Director

Areas of expertise: Occupational health and safety; day laborers; fire rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles; low-wage workers; nonstandard work; union health and safety provisions; environmental hazards and climate disasters; worker education and training; participatory action research 

Saba Waheed

UCLA Labor Center Director 

Areas of expertise: Workplace conditions; low-wage industries; women’s work; working students; young workers; domestic workers and employers; nail salon workers and employers; taxi and rideshare workers; grocery and retail workers; fast food and restaurant workers; LGBTQ+ workers; cannabis workers; research justice; worker narratives and storytelling

Jennifer J. Chun

IRLE Associate Director, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Labor Studies, Chair of International Development Studies program

Areas of expertise: Informal and precarious worker organizing; gender and care work; intersectional and transnational feminism; labor and protest in contemporary Korea, Asian American workers and communities

Chris Newman

UCLA Labor Studies faculty and Legal Director & General Counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)

Areas of expertise: Day laborers; immigration law and policy; civil rights; undocumented workers  

Chris Zepeda-Millan

Labor Studies Faculty Chair, Professor of Public Policy
and Chicana/o & Central American Studies

Areas of expertise: Immigration policy, social movements, Latino/a/e socialization

Ana-Christina Ramón

Entertainment and Media Research Initiative Director, lead author of the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report series

Areas of expertise: Equity and diversity in the entertainment industry

Caroline Luce

Project Director at the UCLA IRLE

Areas of expertise: Labor and social movement history; Los Angeles labor and immigration history; Jewish migration, labor and working class history; union organizing, education workers, higher education unions

Victor Narro

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center 

Areas of expertise: Wage theft and wage policy; low-wage immigrant workers; immigration policy and worker centers

Tia Koonse

Legal and Policy Research Manager at the UCLA Labor Center

Areas of expertise: Low-wage workers; wage theft; labor law; fast food workers; working conditions; gig workers; court-ordered community service; housing; domestic workers

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center

Areas of expertise: Immigration; Latinos in the United States; U.S.-Mexico relations; labor policies in Mexico and the US; indigenous Mexican migrants in the U.S. 

Janna Shadduck-Hernández

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center

Areas of expertise: Labor and workplace education; community-based education/ popular education; community service-learning; gender issues; immigration and undocumented migration; undocumented students; low-wage working families and K-12 education in Los Angeles; qualitative research methods and field research; arts activism; labor, immigration, sexuality and LGBTQ issues; Latino community issues: education, higher education, community development

Kent Wong

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center 

Areas of expertise: U.S. labor movement; labor law; immigration and immigrant workers; immigrant youth and undocumented students; Asian American workers; Nonviolence; global labor issues