Sharon Terman
Director, Work and Family Program
Sharon Terman (she/her) is Director of the Work and Family Program and Senior Staff Attorney. She provides legal advice to workers in low-wage jobs, represents employees facing family medical crises, advocates for policy change to promote family-friendly workplaces, and educates the community through trainings, know-your-rights materials, and technical assistance. Sharon is an expert on family and medical leave policies and has helped craft several landmark laws improving California’s work-family policies, including expansions of Paid Family Leave to cover caregiving for siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and parents-in-law, and increasing the benefit amount, especially for low-wage workers; expansion of job-protected leave to millions more Californians; a law providing continued health insurance benefits during pregnancy leave; and a law ensuring job-protected time off to visit or enroll children in school or childcare or to address a child care emergency.
Sharon has provided expert testimony before Congress, the California Legislature, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and she serves on Governor Newsom’s Paid Family Leave Taskforce. She co-founded a medical-legal partnership with Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Women’s Clinic to educate low-income pregnant patients about workplace rights.
Sharon received her B.A. with highest distinction from UC Berkeley and received her J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School. Before joining Legal Aid at Work as a Skadden Fellow in 2005, she clerked for the Honorable Richard A. Paez of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sharon is the 2011 recipient of the Stanford Law School Miles L. Rubin Public Interest Award. She is the proud mother of a young daughter.