Joan Graff (she/her) has been President of Legal Aid at Work since 1981. She began her legal career working in the General Counsel’s office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and she was a founding staff member of Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco.

Swaaliha is a Legal Fellow with the Wage Protection Program where she assists with wage claims and represents clients before the California Labor Commissioner. Swaaliha is committed to leveraging her legal education and skills to help marginalized communities.

Laura Alvarenga Scalia (she/her/ella) is a Legal Fellow through the Foundation for Advocacy Inclusion & Resources (F.A.I.R.) with the Disability Rights Project and our National Origin & Immigrants’ Rights Project. She focuses her work on the rights of low-wage immigrant workers and other workers who face discrimination based on their disabilities, national origin or ethnicity.

Alexis Alvarez (she/her/ella) advises and represents people with disabilities facing discrimination in employment and unequal access to government programs and services. Before joining Legal Aid at Work’s Disability Rights Program, she was a staff attorney with the Disability Rights Legal Center’s Cancer Legal Resource Center in Los Angeles, where she helped people tackle legal issues related to cancer.

Alexx Campbell (he/him/él) is a staff attorney in the Wage Protection Program. He represents workers who have experienced wage theft, assisting clients with cases in court and before the California Labor Commissioner. Alexx also serves clients at Wage Claim Clinics at day labor centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and at the Labor Commissioner offices in San Francisco and Oakland. He educates and trains workers and community members on wage and hour protections and how to combat wage theft. Alexx often serves immigrant and Spanish-speaking workers, and is fluent in Spanish. In an earlier role at Legal Aid at Work, Alexx focused on helping construction workers recover unpaid wages using mechanic’s liens.

Nora Cassidy (she/her/ella) is an attorney in our Gender Equity and LGBT Rights Program and our Fair Play for Girls in Sports Project. She represents and supports workers who have faced harassment based on their sex, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity and advocates for equality for girls in K-12 sports and parks and recreation programs.

DeCarol Davis is the Director of the Community Legal Services program, which provides free legal services to low-wage workers at Workers’ Rights Clinics throughout California. Prior to joining Legal Aid at Work in 2020, Davis, in addition to bartending and managing house at Shotgun Players, Ashby Stage, conducted international legal research with the University of Sydney, Australia on the exploitation of migrant workers. Prior to her research, Davis litigated as a plaintiff-side employment attorney at Bryan Schwartz Law. 

Marisa Díaz (she/her/ella) defends and promotes the rights of low-wage immigrant workers and other workers who face discrimination based on their national origin or ethnicity. To do this, Marisa engages in impact litigation, community education, and policy work. Before joining Legal Aid at Work, Marisa was a fellow at Equal Rights Advocates, where she advocated on behalf of women who faced gender-based discrimination in the workplace.

Diana Fabian-Gutierrez (she/her/ella) is a Legal Fellow with the Work and Family Program. Diana focuses her work on the rights of pregnant workers, new parents, and caregivers. Diana often serves communities hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic including low wage workers and mono-lingual Spanish Speakers. Her work includes legal intakes, community trainings, and legislative advocacy to expand family-friendly workplace policies. As the daughter of immigrants, a first-generation law graduate, and a past restaurant worker Diana provides a firsthand perspective in serving our client base.

Mike Gaitley (he/him) is a staff attorney in the Community Legal Services program, where he has developed and nurtured a model for providing free legal services through a Workers’ Rights Clinic that has been emulated by numerous legal organizations.

As director of LAAW's National Origin and Immigrants' Rights Program, Chris (he/him) focuses on employment practices that disproportionately affect immigrant workers, language minorities and others who face discrimination because of where they or their families come from. In this work, he has litigated legal questions of first impression, leading to judicial decisions that have solidified and expanded Federal and California law protections for these worker communities.

Jinny (she/her) directs the Disability Rights Program at Legal Aid at Work, where she represents clients seeking accommodation and facing discrimination by employers, educational institutions, and public entities. She joined Legal Aid at Work as the Félix Velarde-Muñoz Fellow in 1999-2001 and litigated race, disability, national origin, and gender cases. She returned as a staff attorney in 2008 following work in Washington, D.C., and in private practice.

Elizabeth Kristen (she/her) is the director of our Gender Equity & LGBT Rights Program, where she represents low-wage workers facing employment discrimination and harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, military, or veteran status. As director of our Fair Play for Girls in Sports project, she engages in community education, negotiations, litigation, and policy work on behalf of female students who have not been afforded equal athletic opportunities under Title IX. She won a ground breaking Ninth Circuit ruling, with her co-counsel, that enforces Title IX of the Education Amendments in a Southern California high school (Ollier v. Sweetwater).

Rachael Langston is a staff attorney in the LGBT & Gender Equity and Disability Rights Programs. She advises and represents workers with disabilities, with a primary focus on disability discrimination and failure to accommodate in the workplace.

Jared Odessky (he/him) is a legal fellow in our Gender Equity & LGBTQ Rights Program. Jared advises workers who face discrimination and harassment based on their sex, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.

As a Skadden Fellow, Jared focuses on representing low-wage LGBTQ workers in underserved areas like the Central Valley. During law school, he worked for the National Employment Law Project, the Employment Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services, A Better Balance, and Outten & Golden, a plaintiff-side employment law firm. He was also a regular contributor to the blog OnLabor and a research assistant to the faculty at Harvard University’s Labor and Worklife Program. Before law school he worked as a legislative aide and as a union organizer.

Jared received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Columbia University.

Kim Ouillette is an attorney in the Wage Protection Program who is serving as the Day Labor Outreach and Wage Recovery Project Fellow. She represents low-wage workers with an focus on assisting construction and landscaping workers in recovering unpaid wages using mechanic’s liens.

As a member of our Work and Family and SURVIVE programs, Julia (she/her/ella) assists with the project helplines and provides legal advice, know-your-rights workshops and direct legal services for workers struggling with family and medical crises. She also directs the Healthy Mothers Workplace Coalition, which includes numerous government and community partners.

As the SURVIVE Fellow at Legal Aid at Work (LAAW), Maria’s work focuses on improving the economic stability, health, and wellbeing of survivors of violence by advocating for survivors who have been subjected to unlawful practices on the job. Most recently, Maria worked at a boutique law firm, where she assisted asylum seekers and other immigrants seek relief from deportation and release from ICE custody. In 2016 as an attorney in the Community Legal Services program, Maria helped launch LAAW’s Workers’ Rights Clinic in San Diego. After law school, Maria worked at Bay Area Legal Aid; where she assisted domestic violence survivors apply for protective orders and help with custody, visitation, and other safety planning issues. She has clerked with Legal Aid of Napa Valley and the Immigration Center for Women and Children. Maria received her B.A. in Sociology from UC Berkeley in 2009 and her JD from UC Hastings in 2014. During law school Maria was Co-President of La Raza Law Students Association.

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.

Kim works with our Gender Equity & LGBT Rights Program and our Fair Play for Girls in Sports Project. Through litigation, education and policy work, Kim advocates for equality, with a specific focus on athletic opportunities for female youth — particularly in low-income communities.

Brisa Velazquez Oatis (she/her/ella) oversees the Workers’ Rights Clinics throughout California as a part of the Community Legal Services Program. As a Provisionally Licensed Lawyer, she manages the administration and outreach of the Workers’ Rights Clinics and provides legal services to workers in California.

Prior to joining Legal Aid at Work, Brisa worked at a wage and hour firm for over two years and volunteered her time at legal services agencies.

Stacy Villalobos (she/her/ella) is a staff attorney in the Racial Economic Justice Program at Legal Aid at Work. She represents workers fighting race discrimination before federal and state courts as well as administrative agencies.  Stacy has experience litigating a wide range of employment issues, including discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and wage theft. Stacy also spearheads Legal Aid at Work's Ban the Box and Fair Chance work representing job seekers with criminal records. 

George Warner (he/him) is the Director of the Wage Protection Program at Legal Aid At Work. He represents workers who have been subjected to labor trafficking and wage theft, and workers seeking to obtain wage replacement benefits, including Unemployment Insurance. George Warner joined Legal Aid at Work's Wage Protection Program in 2019. Prior to joining Legal Aid at Work, George worked for the Honorable Vince Chhabria on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and the Honorable Marsha Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. George graduated from Stanford Law School in 2017, and Brown University in 2011.

Katie (she/her) is leading the implementation of our Medical-Legal Partnership model in Contra Costa County. She provides free legal services, including representation and technical support, regarding the rights of sexual assault and domestic violence survivors, workers struggling with family and medical crises, and pregnant workers and new parents. Katie also advocates to expand workers' rights and provides trainings on rights to leave, accommodations, and wage replacement to health care providers, survivors and advocates.

Bob Borton is a former partner with Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe, where he concentrated on complex commercial litigation, with an emphasis on class actions, consumer, civil rights, real estate, and banking. He has extensive court and jury trial experience and has litigated a wide variety of civil rights, immigration, and landlord/tenant cases. He served on Legal Aid at Work's board of directors for more than 25 years and now consults on litigation as needed in the Gender Equity and LGBT Rights program at Legal Aid at Work.

Joseph Grodin is an emeritus professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law, and he served five years as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. He is a cofounder of Legal Aid at Work's Workers' Rights Clinic.

Henry Hewitt consults part time with individual programs at Legal Aid at Work on a range of litigation. He is now working on cases involving pregnancy discrimination and the money bail system in San Francisco, among other issues.

Cacilia works with Legal Aid at Work's Gender Equity and LGBT Rights program on cases relating to gender equity, the rights of low-wage women and families, and veterans’ issues. A former senior staff attorney at the California Women’s Law Center, she litigated numerous cases addressing systemic discrimination against women and girls in education and employment. Her work has produced five published decisions to date.

Ruth Silver Taube advises Legal Aid at Work on matters related to ERISA disability benefit plans, and she is a vocal advocate against labor trafficking. She is also a sole practitioner at the Law Office of Silver & Taube and has been an adjunct professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law for 13 years.

Jessica (She/Her) is the community organizer for the Central Valley program that is under the Gender/LGBTQ program. Raised in Stockton, Jessica has seen first-hand the empowerment reliable, accessible legal services can have on immigrant communities. Jessica conducts intakes, manages calls to the Central Valley helpline and works closely with Central Valley local organizations to provide legal services, advice and information to directly impacted communities

As part of the Work and Family Program team, Linda is passionate about providing advocacy, spreading empowerment, raising awareness, and providing resource referrals in English and Spanish for workers struggling with family and medical crises, with an emphasis on families impacted by COVID-19. She supports project helplines and legal intakes, and helps coordinate social media and outreach efforts to increase awareness of rights and resources available to low-income workers.

Since graduating from the Delancey Street Foundation in 2014, Katie has been active in supporting communities throughout the Bay Area. Katie recently completed a policy fellowship with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), designed for formerly incarcerated people to develop skills necessary to pursue a career in public policy. Katie is a proud alumni of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, where young women are transformed into leaders. She continues to work closely with the San Francisco Adult Probation Department-Reentry Division, which focuses on job development and placement for people on probation.

Aldo (he/him/el) supports attorneys across LAAW’s programs by conducting legal research, formatting legal documents, recording client intakes, and translating documents from English to Spanish. Aldo also serves clients at Wage Claim Clinics at the Labor Commissioner offices in San Francisco and Oakland twice a month. As a native Spanish speaker, Aldo often serves immigrant and Spanish-speaking workers and helps facilitate communications between attorneys and clients.

Tishon enjoys helping people and strongly believes in the power of the law to address issues of social justice. Supporting lawyers across Legal Aid at Work's programs, she looks up rules and prepares pleadings, subpoenas, deposition notices, spreadsheets, client correspondence, and other documents.

Valerie (she/her) comes to us from the Paralegal Program at San Francisco State University where she received her ABA –approved Paralegal Certificate, with honors. She provides legal support across all programs in the organization including researching civil procedure and local rules, performing analysis on discovery, calendaring deadlines, and preparing legal documents.

King (he/him) provides language assistance and legal information to low-income workers with limited English capacity. He helped initiate and manages our Chinese-language phone line, and he conducts outreach on employment law weekly through Chinese-language radio and newspapers. Before joining Legal Aid at Work in 1996, King worked as a broadcast journalist.

Kevin (he/him) cultivates the strategic alliances that make our mission possible. In that role, he oversees the organization’s communication efforts to help raise awareness of our work and the impact it has on the lives of our low-wage worker clients. Kevin also works closely with foundations, Board members, governmental entities, and other key supporters to ensure that we have the resources we need to carry out our mission. He also helps teach our Workers' Rights Clinic in East Palo Alto, which is operated in partnership with Stanford Law School. A plaintiffs’-side employment lawyer by training, Kevin was previously a litigation partner in the law firm of Kerr & Wagstaffe, during which time he served on Legal Aid at Work’s Board as the Chair of the External Relations Committee. Kevin received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2006 and his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Michigan in 2002.

Kevin (he/him) works in Legal Aid at Work’s development department, assisting in a variety of activities including database work, gift entry and acknowledgment, and communications. He worked previously as a non-profit database associate, a street fundraiser, and an assistant pre-school teacher among other childcare positions.

Steve (he/him) manages fundraising and development campaigns for Legal Aid at Work. He joined us as coordinator of our $4 million Justice Fund Campaign in 2006. He had worked for six Bay Area nonprofits, including the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Shanti, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Greg (he/him) manages Legal Aid at Work's donor database and collaborates with other members of the development team on fundraising appeals and events. He joined us from the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, where he held several positions, including admissions manager and database administrator. In those roles, he promoted museum programs, hired and supervised front desk employees, entered and managed donor data and generated reports, and supported three annual fundraising events, among other responsibilities.

As a Grants and Impact Assessment Specialist, Madeleine Rowell (she/her) acts as a project coordinator for Legal Aid at Work's grant application and reporting processes, working to ensure the organization's grant-related work aligns with LAAW's overall programmatic strategy. In doing so, Madeleine gathers critical information that allows Legal Aid at Work to know how well we are achieving our goals and how we can better serve those in need. Before joining Legal Aid at Work, Madeleine was a student at Stanford University, where she earned her B.A. in comparative studies in race and ethnicity with a concentration in politics, policy, and equity and a minor in psychology.

Howard oversees all the operational and administrative functions for Legal Aid at Work. A member of the management team, he is primarily responsible for office management, human resources, compliance, technology, financial management, and oversight. Howard has held a number of roles in support of the mission of the organization since 1997 and was the Director of Human Resources prior to becoming the Chief Operating Officer.

As the operations associate at Legal Aid at Work, BreAnna (She/Her) supports our staff, clerks, and network administrator in a variety of operations related tasks including leading onsite management tasks such as conducting IT orientations and timekeeping training for on-boarding new users such as attorneys, law clerks, and staff. She also collaborates with the network administrator on software configurations as needed.

Ana plays an integral role in the daily operations and flow of our office and is the first Legal Aid at Work staffer that many of our clients speak with. Bilingual in Spanish and English, Ana conducts initial intakes and determines where to direct first-time callers. She also manages appointments for our legal clinics across California; interprets and translates for clients and potential clients in the office; and does written translation work.

Ian (he/him) joined the Legal Aid at Work team in May 2020, acting as both Accounting and Human Resources manager. His day-to-day consists of working with both staff and individual departments, maintaining and developing the organization’s financial and human resource systems to sustain a high level of productivity. He works closely with his department to coordinate the annual audit, budget and enrollment. Ian received a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from San Francisco State University, as well as a Master’s Degree in Accountancy from Golden Gate University. With over ten years of experience working with a variety of industries ranging from government organizations, for-profit corporations, and international nonprofits, Ian utilizes his expertise to support Legal Aid at Work’s mission and program. In his free time he loves enjoying food from his home country of Taiwan, and walking his twin dogs. He is incredibly grateful to be a member of the Legal Aid at Work family.

As the Senior Accounting Manager, Galina oversees a variety of day to day financial and accounting functions to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the financials at LAAW. Among other things, she is responsible for preparing the annual organizational budget and leading the annual audit effort. She works closely with Development Department as well as Legal and other program Staff. Galina comes to LAAW with over a decade of nonprofit experience, and with a passion for the work and mission of Legal Aid at Work.

As the Operations and Technology Manager at Legal Aid at Work, Scott (he/him) focuses on optimizing our day to day office operations and technology to facilitate the delivery of services to our clients. He has been with the organization since 1999 and was previously the Network Administrator prior to his current role. A San Francisco native, Scott attended Archbishop Riordan High School and San Francisco State University. He is proud to contribute his skills to the work of such an important San Francisco institution as Legal Aid at Work.

Lawrence (he/him) joined Legal Aid at Work as its Vice President of Finance & Operations in the summer of 2021. He is responsible to the organization’s financial health and sustainability as well as day-to-day operations such as IT and office management. As a member of the management team, he contributes his ideas and experience to the organization’s strategy and growth. Prior to Legal Aid at Work, Lawrence has been a non-profit leader with over 10 years of experience in several nonprofit organizations range from social justice, community service to performing art and international education development. He earned his B.As in Accounting and International Business and went on receiving Master in Taxation and MBA. He is currently pursuing on his master degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. As an immigrant himself, a people of color and a member of LGBTQIA+, he is very proud of Legal Aid at Work’s mission and programs, and of being a part of Legal Aid at Work family!