Welcoming Debbie Berkowitz as a KI Fellow

Posted in News

KI is excited to welcome Debbie Berkowitz to KI as a fellow focusing on worker safety and health. Debbie has made a career in advocacy for workers and we a proud to have her join our team. Read her biography below.

Debbie Berkowitz is a worker safety and health policy expert and advocate. Before coming the Kalmanovitz Initiative, she was the Worker Safety and Health Program Director at the National Employment Law Project for six years where she worked with national and state partners to develop successful policies and campaigns that improved conditions for vulnerable, low-wage workers in dangerous industries, including temporary workers and those in the meat, poultry and food industry. Most recently she helped lead campaigns for stronger State and Federal standards to protect workers from COVID-19.   

She is the author of widely cited reports and research on model  policies to improve worker safety and workers’ compensation systems. Her past positions include serving as chief of staff and then the senior policy advisor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2009-2015). Debbie was also the  health and safety director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the health and safety director of the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. She  has testified before Congressional and state legislative committee hearings and her writing has been published in the Washington Post, Bloomberg BNA, Workers’ Compensation, Quartz, the Hill and more. Debbie  is regularly quoted by major news outlets for her expertise on worker safety and health. Debbie is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Public Health Association’s Alice Hamilton Award.