Sharon Block was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor and Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Labor.
For twenty years, Block has held key labor policy positions across the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Early in her career she worked as an attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, and returned to the NLRB in 2012 when she was appointed to serve as a member of the Board by President Obama. She was senior counsel to the Senate HELP committee under Senator Edward Kennedy, playing a central role in the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act. She has held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Labor throughout her career. Recently, as head of the policy office at the Department of Labor, Block hosted - with Wage and Hour Administrator David Weil and Open Societies Foundation's Ken Zimmerman - the Department's three-day symposium on the Future of Work. The symposium brought together a wide array of thought leaders to address how changes in labor markets and business models have impacts on key issues such as enforcement, labor standards, workforce development, employee benefits, and data in the U.S. and around the world.... Read more about Sharon Block
Faculty Co-Director, Labor and Worklife Program Professor, Economics, Harvard University
Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is currently serving as Faculty co-Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School, and is Co-Director of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities.
Faculty Co-Director, Labor and Worklife Program Professor, Harvard Law School
Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law, employment law, and law and social change, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics.
Senior Research Associate International Programs Professor of Management, Sloan School of Management, MIT
Dr. Pierre Azoulay is an Associate Professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His general research interests lie at the intersection of several subfields of economics: technical change, labor, health, and organizational economics. Most of his work deals with the organization of the “ideas sector” of the economy, and the consequences of different institutional arrangements for innovation, and ultimately economic growth.
Senior Research Associate Research on Labor Markets
Erling Barth is Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo and Professor II at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo, affiliated with ESOP. His PhD is from the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo. He is Wertheim Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University, Research Economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) at Cambridge, MA, and Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labour, IZA, in Bonn.
His research interests include technological change and its effects on the labor market, the impact of labor market institutions, inequality and the wage structure, employment, the economics of the welfare state, gender wage differentials, immigration, ownership, labor mobility, and firms’ behavior.... Read more about Erling Barth
Larry W. Beeferman received a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School and a doctorate in applied physics from Harvard University. He joined the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School in 2004 to help establish the Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project.... Read more about Larry Beeferman
Savannah Behrent-Clark is the Program Administrator at the Labor and Worklife Program where she is responsible for administrative logistics, maintains relationships with internal and external vendors and program constituencies, and is also responsible for budget management and strategic planning of multi-year grants and awards. Prior to joining the Labor and Worklife Program in 2018, Savannah worked for the Program on International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School as a project coordinator.... Read more about Savannah Behrent-Clark
Wertheim Fellow Research on International Comparative Labor Movements Former Executive Director, Labor and Worklife Program, 1989-2017
Dr. Bernard served as Executive Director of the Labor and Worklife Program from 1989-2017. She has a BA from the University of Alberta, a MA from the... Read more about Elaine Bernard
Aaron Bernstein co-founded the Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project’s Investor Initiative in 2008 to help pension funds and other investors analyze the long-term investment risks of social factors such as labor and human rights and human capital.... Read more about Aaron Bernstein
Senior Research Associate Research on Retail Industry Behavior
Jörn Boehnke received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago. He joined the Labor and Worklife Program as a postdoctoral fellow in 2017. He is also a research fellow at the Center for Mathematical Sciences and Applications at Harvard University.... Read more about Jörn Boehnke
LWP Fellow Research on Labor Law Between the US and Australia
Pauline Bomball is a full-time tenured Lecturer at the Australian National University Law School and a Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law... Read more about Pauline Bomball
Alida has been the webmaster for the past 10 years. In 2017, she overhauled the website to its current state on the OpenScholar platform. In the past year, she has expanded her responsibilities at the LWP becoming the director of the Harvard Trade Union Program. She is also the resident techie on staff and is moving the LWP to a more efficient system with Salesforce.... Read more about Alida J. Castillo
Lingli Chen is a visiting scholar in the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard University for one year from March 2017 to March 2018. She did undergraduate... Read more about Lingli Chen
Research Associate Research on AI, Robots, and the Future of Work
Xiaoran Chen provides social science analysis of AI, robots, and the future of work. Her research interest focuses on the effect of AI, robotics, and... Read more about Xiaoran Chen
