Darrick Hamilton is a university professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School; and recently appointed as the chief economist of the AFL-CIO. Considered one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, Professor Hamilton redefines how an economy should work, identifies powerful opportunities for investment in human capacity, and propells collaboration alongside field leaders to advance the realization of economic inclusion, social equity and civic engagement for all people in the US and across the globe. One of the pioneers of the identity group stratification economic field, he has been profiled in the New York Times, Mother Jones, Bloomberg’s Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. He advises local, national and global leaders on economic policy, and has developed and collaborated on transformative policy proposals that have shifted billions of dollars into the hands of people, inspiring legislative proposals at the federal, state, and local levels, including baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee. Professor Hamilton was named an inaugural Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, he is a graduate of Oberlin College and received a PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina.

Brian Kagoro is Managing Director of Programs at the Open Society Foundations.
He oversees a diverse portfolio of programmatic opportunities in Africa, and Asia
including work gender, race, power , democracy, and conflict transformation. helping
to deliver on Open Society’s strategic goals and ensuring that the Foundations’ full
portfolio of work remains balanced, inclusive, future-focused, and transformative.

Brian previously served as Director of Justice and Intersectionality, responsible for
guiding Open Society’s global work to advance democratic freedoms and ensure
accountability for human rights abuses. In that role, he developed and led the
Foundations’ strategy to redress abuses of power that undermine democratic
practices and rights, and to advance policies that recognize and secure equal rights
and just outcomes for underserved communities, including innovative initiatives on
caste, racial, and gender justice. Before that, Brian was Director of Programs in
Open Society's Africa Regional Office. He has played a key role in integrating
intersectionality across all Open Society programs.

Brian brings more than 29 years of strategic leadership experience across
international, regional, and intergovernmental organizations, such as the United
Nations Development Programme, ActionAid International, and several African
Union institutions. His extensive work and activism in the areas of
transitional/restorative/reparative justice, human rights, social justice, international
development, and accountability allow him to engage social justice and economic
structural transformation subjects with deep knowledge and empathy.

Cathy Feingold is a leading advocate on global workers’ rights issues. As director of the AFL-CIO’s International Department, Feingold is a committed and passionate advocate, strategic campaigner and policy expert. In 2018, Feingold was elected Deputy President of the International Trade Union Confederation, the organization representing 200 

million unionized workers worldwide. She brings more than 20 years of experience in trade and global economic policy, and worker, human and women's rights issues. 

In 2022, Secretary Blinken appointed Feingold to his Foreign Affairs Policy Board where she provides input on a worker centered foreign policy agenda. In 2020, Speaker Pelosi appointed Feingold to the Independent Mexico Labor Expert Board, the body created under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to monitor and evaluate labor reforms and worker rights compliance in Mexico. Her work in both global and grassroots fora reflect her commitment to strengthening the voice of working people in global policy debates. 

Feingold previously directed the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s work in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where she worked with local trade union partners to develop innovative campaigns to improve the working conditions of domestic, migrant and informal economy workers. The work led to a growing movement of domestic workers who affiliated to the Dominican labor movement. In Haiti, she developed labor law training programs and helped publish the first Creole language excerpt of the Haitian labor law, accessible to workers. She led the organization’s humanitarian response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. 

Feingold’s professional experience includes work for the labor movement, large international organizations, small grassroots NGOs and a foundation. She leads coalition efforts to shape global labor standards, including the recently ratified International Labor Organization Convention 190 to eliminate violence and harassment at work. She has written about the impact of economic policies on market women in Nigeria and, as a Fulbright scholar in Nicaragua, she researched the impact of structural adjustment policies on women workers. She continues to be a strong advocate for gender equity and working women issues. 

Feingold holds a bachelor's degree from Pitzer College and an M.P.A. from Columbia University.

Kelly M. Fay Rodríguez served as the lead diplomat for international labor policy for the Biden-Harris Administration at the U.S. Department of State. As the Secretary's Special Representative for International Labor Affairs, she led the Department's Office of International Labor Affairs, where she launched and implemented the first-ever Presidential Memorandum to promote labor in U.S. foreign policy and trade. Previously, she was a Trade and Labor Oversight Counsel for the Democratic majority of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means. In this role she led labor-trade policy work, including the enforcement of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement's Labor Rapid Response Mechanism, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and Section 307 of the Tariff Act (prohibiting imported goods made of forced labor), as well as U.S. trade agreements and preference programs. 

From 2012 to 2020, Ms. Fay Rodríguez worked for the AFL–CIO and Solidarity Center on domestic and global trade union programs. She led the Center’s flagship program in Bangladesh from 2018 to 2020, which included legal support, trade union capacity-building, and strategic international supply chain advocacy with women garment workers. From 2012 to 2017 in Washington, D.C., she advanced strategic local capacity-building, immigration reform, and Latino political campaigns for the AFL-CIO leadership. Before law school, she worked at the New York State Attorney General's Office in the Labor Bureau on minimum wage and hour law enforcement, and for SEIU Local 32B-J union members in New York City on immigration legal services. She also worked with the Organization of American States on a dozen international election observation missions to various countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. 

She earned her law degree from City University of New York School of Law, where she was a Haywood Burns Human and Civil Rights Fellow and completed the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She comes from a proud union and immigrant family, with roots in Worcester, Massachusetts and the Dominican Republic. 

Dr. Amara Enyia is a Strategist and Public Policy Expert on city and state policy as well as international affairs with expertise in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. 

In addition to her role as President of transnational advocacy organization Global Black, she also serves as the interim Co-Executive of  the Movement for Black Lives, and Senior Fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School in New York City. She also serves as a Strategy Advisor for organizations, companies, political campaigns, and public sector institutions globally. Dr. Enyia is a Leader-in-Residence for Policy and Change with the Atlantic Institute and also serves as Chairwoman of the International Working Group for the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent and Chairwoman of the working group on Global Economic Systems, Institutions and Policy. She also serves as the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Global Litigation Advocacy Network for People of African Descent.

Dr. Enyia is member of the 2020-2022 cohort with the London School of Economics Executive Program in Cities. Prior to her current roles, she worked in the Mayor’s Office for the City of Chicago and served as Executive Director of community-based organizations. As a grassroots organizer she worked on issues of education equity, economic justice, and environmental justice.

Amara holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and bachelor’s degree in Political Science. She also holds a master’s degree in education, a master’s degree from the London School of Economics, a law degree where she focused on international law, and a PhD in Education Policy with a specialization in Evaluation. She serves on the Board of the Global Strategists Association, Pakistan Journal of Urban Affairs, the Chicago Community Loan Fund, and Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives Microfinance Group. She also serves on the National Advisory Board of the Public Banking Institute and is a 2022 inductee into the Illini Media Company Hall of Fame. Dr. Enyia maintains proficiency in Igbo, Spanish, French, and Portuguese and was named a Public Policy Global Leadership Fellow with the Global Strategists Association.