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 Labor Studies academic program, the first major of its kind at the University of California.

For press and media interviews please contact, IRLE’s Director of Communications, Citlalli Chávez-Nava, citlallichavez@ucla.edu, (310)562-0943.

Ana-Christina Ramón

Entertainment and Media Research Initiative Director

Equity and diversity in the entertainment industry, lead author of the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report series

Chris Zepeda-Millan

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

Immigration policy, social movements, Latino/a/e socialization

Corinne Bendersky

Faculty Chair at the UCLA Human Resources Round Table (HARRT) 

Conflict management, leadership development, organizational behavior, and team effectiveness

Gaspar Rivera Salgado

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center

Immigration, Latinos in the United States, U.S.-Mexico relations, labor policies in Mexico and the US, and indigenous Mexican migrants in the U.S. 

Janna Shadduck-Hernández

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center

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

Jennifer J. Chun

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

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

Kent Wong

Director at the UCLA Labor Center 

U.S. labor movement, labor law, immigration and immigrant workers, immigrant youth and undocumented students, Asian American workers, Nonviolence, global labor issues 

Kevin Riley

UCLA Labor and Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) Director

Occupational health and safety, low-wage workers, day laborers, 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 

Workplace conditions, low-wage industries, women’s work, working students, 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

Tia Koonse

Legal and Policy Research Manager at the UCLA Labor Center

Low-wage workers, wage theft, labor law, fast food workers, working conditions, gig workers, court-ordered community service, housing, domestic workers

Tobias Higbie

IRLE Director, Professor of History and Labor Studies 

Labor and social movement history, immigrant workers and labor unions, Los Angeles hotel, janitorial, and garment worker unions, social movement education, and public history. Higbie’s most recent book is Labor’s Mind: a history of working-class intellectual life (2019), a study of the self-educated workers who powered the union movements of the early 20th century

Victor Narro

Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center 

Wage theft and wage policy, low-wage immigrant workers, immigration policy, and worker centers