EJC Board Members

(Affiliations are listed for informational purposes only.)

Orrin Baird, President (Service Employees International Union)
Hope Gleicher, Vice President (Retired Foundation Director)
Carol Waller Pope, Secretary (Federal Labor Relations Authority)
Lisa Lindsley, Treasurer (AFSCME)
Joseph Kolick (International Union of Painters and Allied Trades)
Jorge Carranza (Clear Communications, Community Board Member)
Meei Shi Child (Community Board Member)
Barbara Kagan (Steptoe & Johnson, LLP)
Sarah Massey (Massey Media)
Aydin Tuncer (Raymond James & Associates)
Heidi Shierholz (Economic Policy Institute)
George Murphy (Murphy Anderson PLLC)
Marla Greenberg (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Office of the General Counsel)

EJC Board Biographies

Orrin D. Baird, Esq. – President

Orrin Baird has been an Associate General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union, CTW, since 1990. He is the union’s chief counsel to its Property Services Division. Before that, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., labor law firm of Connerton, Ray & Simon from 1980 to 1990. He also worked for the legal department of the Laborers’ International Union, AFL-CIO, from 1977 to 1980. His practice has been restricted exclusively to representing labor unions, their members and individual workers. Prior to attending law school, he was a community organizer and an organizer for the United Farm Workers in Florida. He received a J.D. degree from Antioch School of Law in 1977 and a B.A. degree from Wesleyan University in 1969.

Hope Gleicher – Vice President

Hope Gleicher is the former executive director of the Trellis Foundation. As executive director, Ms. Gleicher led the foundation’s efforts to assist both the public and private sectors in being more responsive to the citizenry. Trellis continues to provide financial support to a wide range of Washington area efforts aimed at solving complicated and seemingly intractable problems through systemic change. Previously, Ms. Gleicher served as founding executive director of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (1991-1998) and as founding executive director of Health Care for the Homeless, Maryland (1985-1990). She is currently advising and/or managing projects within several area organizations: Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, Washington Grantmakers and Kaiser Permanente.

Carol Waller Pope, Esq. – Secretary

Carol Waller Pope was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate as one of three Members of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). The Members comprise the quasi-judicial component of the FLRA and have responsibility for the review of arbitration decisions, unfair labor practice case decisions issued by Administrative Law Judges, and representation decisions regarding the certification of federal employee units for exclusive recognition for purposes of collective bargaining. Ms. Pope has been a Member of the FLRA since November 2000. The FLRA is an independent Federal agency responsible for administering the labor-management relations program for 1.9 million non-postal Federal employees worldwide. Its mission is to promote stable and constructive labor-management relations that contribute to an efficient and effective government. In April 2007, President Bush recess appointed Carol Waller Pope to be a Member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, and in October 2008, the U.S. Senate confirmed Carol Waller Pope to a second term as Member.

Ms. Pope, a career Federal employee, had been the Assistant General Counsel for Appeals for the FLRA Office of the General Counsel. Prior to that, Ms. Pope served as Executive Assistant to the General Counsel, and before that as an Attorney in the FLRA’s Boston Regional Office. Before joining the FLRA, Ms. Pope was employed as an Attorney with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Solicitor, Employee Benefits Division, Washington, DC. Ms. Pope has a B.A. degree from Simmons College, and a J.D. degree from Northeastern University School of Law, both of which are located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Lisa Lindsley – Treasurer

Lisa Lindsley has 23 years of experience in the financial world, working extensively with Latin American, European, and U.S. interests. After 14 years of work in international banking and investment, she founded Bizcredit to serve low-income U.S. communities. She subsequently became a consultant in international development, with a focus on microfinance, in addition to working on several campaigns to increase minority political participation. Since 2006, she has become a shareholder activist in the U.S. labor movement, working with the Teamsters and with the United Food & Commercial Workers and the Change to Win labor federation, and most recently with AFSCME.

Joseph Kolick, Esq.

Joseph Kolick became General Counsel of IUPAT in 2011.  He joined Dickstein Shapiro LLP in 1979, and was elected to partnership in 1988. Mr. Kolick has a varied civil litigation practice with a focus on complex commercial disputes, labor and employment issues, and appellate advocacy. He has litigated a wide variety of civil matters including disputes of every nature, with an emphasis on class actions and other complex civil litigations, labor and employment cases, and securities litigation. He also has extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution, including arbitration and mediation. He is a former president of the EJC Board.

Jorge Carranza – Community Board Member

Jorge Carranza was born and raised in Lima, Peru. He got his bachelors degree from the Jose Pardo Technological Institute in 1969. His studies led him to work for the state Peruvian telephone company for 25 years, where he represented workers before the company’s Workers Syndicate. From 1987 to 1992, Jorge studied management at the Major National University of San Marcos in Lima, where he was also a student delegate.

Mr. Carranza is a founding member of El Comite de Defensa de los Trabajadores, a community organizing group developed by the EJC.

Meii Shi Child – Community Board Member

Barbara K. Kagan

Barbara Kagan represents Steptoe & Johnson LLP in the public service legal community, actively working with the District of Columbia Bar and various providers of legal services to broaden the scope of pro bono participation. She also provides advice and assistance to corporate clients seeking to develop pro bono programs within their own general counsels’ office.

Ms. Kagan graduated from Cornell University College of Law in 1978. Before joining Steptoe and Johnson in 1992, she worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and as a private practitioner, representing clients in civil and criminal matters.

Sarah Massey

Sarah Massey is the founder and principal of Massey Media, a communications strategy company with the mission of placing progressives in the press. Half of Ms. Massey’s professional life was in the economic justice arena as Communications Director for the National Employment Law Project and as Media Specialist for the AFL-CIO. Prior to worker rights, Ms Massey advocated environmental justice at West Harlem Environmental Action and transit rider rights at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Ms. Massey holds a B.A. degree in International Studies from State University of New York at Cortland and a Masters of Urban Planning from Hunter College. She serves on the Advisory Committee to Headcount, a national voter registration organization and to Split This Rock Poetry Festival in the District.

Ms. Massey regularly lends her public relations and writing expertise to the EJC.

Aydin Tuncer

Aydin Tuncer has nine years of experience in the financial services industry. He was a Telecom equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s as an equity analyst and then an Internet analyst at Prudential Securities in New York. Aydin joined Raymond James & Associates, Inc. in 1999 and brings his institutional Wall Street experience to the comprehensive financial planning process.

Mr. Tuncer holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Tuncer is the former Treasurer of the EJC Board, and also serves as the Treasurer of the Turkish-American Business Forum of Washington, DC.

Heidi Shierholz, Ph.D.

Heidi Shierholz joined the Economic Policy Institute as a labor economist in 2007. Her areas of research include trends in employment, unemployment, and compensation, income and wealth inequality, the low-wage labor market, the minimum wage, immigration and wages, and the gender wage gap. She received a BA in Mathematics from Grinnell College, an MS in Statistics from Iowa State University, and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan. She previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto.

George Murphy, Esq.

George Murphy has represented unions for over 40 years. He is consulted nationally for his expertise.

He joined the legal staff of the Retail Clerks International Association in 1967, which later merged to form the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing more than 1.2 million workers. Mr. Murphy served as General Counsel for the UFCW for more than 20 years, and was involved in every important legal and political event affecting the union.

Upon retiring from that position, he entered private practice where he continues to assist unions in all aspects of labor and employee benefits law.  He is a partner and founder of Murphy Anderson, PLLC.

In 2008 Mr. Murphy was honored by the Peggy Browning Fund for his lifetime of service to working people.

Marla Greenburg, Esq.

Marla Greenberg is an attorney at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) in the Office of the General Counsel.  She previously served U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer on the Banking and Finance Committees in the Senate, and also was his Deputy Regional Director in Buffalo, NY.  Ms. Greenburg also worked for Congressman James R. Langevin of Rhode Island, as his Legislative Assistant, on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology.  She received her law degree from the Howard University School of Law, and her undergraduate degree in Political Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo.