Agenda
DOORS OPEN & NETWORKING | 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM
PANEL 1: LEVERAGING WORKER VOICE IN FINANCIAL MARKETS & EXPLORING NEW DATA | 2:30 PM – 3:15 PM
- Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller
- Jonas Kron, Chief Advocacy Officer, Trillium Asset Management
- Kitty Richards, Acting Executive Director, Groundwork Collaborative
PANEL 2: THE BUSINESS CASE FOR WORKER VOICE | 3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
- Felix Ejeckam, Co-founder & CEO, Akash Systems
- Rhyanna Eichner, Quality Assurance Lead, Zenimax Central Services; represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA)
- Cindy Estrada, Strategic Adviser to the President for the Center for Transformational Organizing, AFL-CIO
- Amy Pannoni, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation
Panel 1: Leveraging Worker Voice in Financial Markets & Exploring New Data
Brad Lander, Comptroller of New York City
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander serves as the City's chief financial officer, leading an office of roughly 800 public servants in their work to promote the financial health, integrity, and effectiveness of city government. As investment advisor and custodian for New York City's public pension funds, Comptroller Lander stewards the retirement security of over 750,000 current and retired public sector workers, with a prudent, diversified, long-term approach to the City's investments and obligations.
Comptroller Lander also serves as the City's budget watchdog and chief accountability officer. The Office's audits under Lander have revealed billions in underreported and inadequate cost controls within City agencies, while the office's public finance work includes innovative social bonds and tender solicitations that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, even amid rising interest rates.
And as Comptroller, Lander has strengthened the office's efforts to combat the climate crisis. His Public Solar NYC plan includes an innovative "public option" to scale up rooftop solar and create good green jobs. Under Comptroller Lander's leadership, three of the City's funds have adopted a detailed plan to reach net zero emissions by 2040, among the most aggressive in the nation.
Prior to being elected Comptroller in 2021, Lander spent 12 years in the City Council, where he co-founded the Council's Progressive Caucus and won transformative changes to expand workers' rights, secure tenant protections, create affordable housing, integrate and strengthen the district's public schools, and make streets safer.
Brad lives with his wife, Meg Barnette, in Brooklyn where they raised two children, Marek and Rosa, who still roll their eyes at his dad jokes.
Jonas Kron, Chief Advocacy Officer, Trillium Asset Management
Jonas is Trillium's Chief Advocacy Officer. With over twenty years of experience in shareholder advocacy, Jonas is responsible for leading and coordinating Trillium's extensive advocacy program, which works to engage companies on their environmental and social performance. His advocacy work includes direct communications with company leadership, investor education and awareness, shareholder proposals, and public policy advocacy at the municipal, state, and federal levels. As a recognized legal expert in the field and a leader in shareholder advocacy, Jonas regularly represents Trillium in the media, at public events, and with clients. Jonas currently serves on the board of US SIF - the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. Prior to joining Trillium, Jonas was an environmental attorney and public defender as well as outside counsel to many socially responsible investment organizations. Jonas holds J.D. and master's degrees from Vermont Law School.
Kitty Richards, Acting Executive Director, Groundwork Collaborative
Kitty Richards is the former Director of the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds at the U.S. Department of Treasury. Previously, she served as a Senior Strategic Advisor to the Groundwork Collaborative, a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, Acting Executive Director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, Chief of Staff to a local legislator, and Economic Policy Advisor to then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden. Earlier in her career, Kitty worked on tax and fiscal policy at several think tanks and on the Hill. Kitty has a J.D. from New York University.
Panel 2: The Business Case for Worker Voice
Amy Pannoni, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft Corporation
Amy Pannoni is a Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Microsoft. Amy leads a cross-functional team of employment law and immigration law attorneys, immigration specialists, program managers, business managers and data analysts. She is responsible for overseeing Microsoft's US and global employment law, immigration, and employment compliance teams. Partnering closely with Human Resources, business clients, and across the legal department, Amy and her team drive programs, policy, and compliance work. Amy is also the Microsoft executive sponsor for the Street Law legal diversity pipeline and mentor for women in law.
Before joining Microsoft in 2012, she was a Partner at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. While in private practice, Amy focused on federal and state employment law and litigation practice advising clients in the technology, hospitality, and retail industries.
Amy received her law degree from the University of Virginia and her bachelor's degree from Princeton University. She is a member of the American Employment Law Council and the in-house co-chair for the American Bar Association Equal Employment Opportunity subcommittee.
Amy is a mom to two teenage boys and loves golfing, entertaining, and vacationing in warm destinations with interesting cuisine with her husband and sons.
Rhyanna Eichner, Quality Assurance Lead, Zenimax Central Services / member of the CWA
Rhyanna is a Quality Assurance Lead for Zenimax Central Services, where she has worked off and on for over 7 years. Rhyanna is passionate about her union's causes, cares deeply for my coworkers, and looks forward to a brighter future. Rhyanna has a bachelor's degree is in Business Management and believes that being a team player, keeping morale up, and managing time are essential in workplaces everywhere.
Rhyanna is originally from Southern Illinois, adores cats, loves to read, and will finally get to visit her number one bucket list destination (Egypt) in January.
Felix Akash, Co-founder & CEO, Akash Systems
Felix Ejeckam, Ph.D. is an entrepreneur and electrical engineer who co-founded Akash Systems, Inc. in January 2016. Ejeckam founded Akash to deliver proprietary diamond-based semiconductors/systems to help close clean-energy gaps, and internet connectivity gaps in societies around the world. The diamond-based semiconductors are many times the world's most thermally conductive materials. Target markets include Space satellites, EV, autonomous vehicles, Power, Wireless, Grid, Radar, etc. Akash is backed by Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, ACME, and others.
Prior to Akash, Ejeckam invented GaN-on-Diamond wafer technology in 2003 at Group4 Labs, Inc which he sold to De Beers in 2013. Ejeckam began his career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, Inc.
He has published over 100 journal/conference papers in engineering and holds over 80 technology patents. He was named a Technology Pioneer (2021-2024) by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and regularly serves as a Business Plan Judge for the UC Berkeley Haas Global Access Program. In December 2021, Newsweek named Ejeckam to its list of "America's 50 Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries and Innovators Who Are Changing The World".
Ejeckam holds masters and a doctorate degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering / Materials Science from Cornell University, and a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University.
Cindy Estrada, Strategic Adviser to the President for the Center for Transformational Organizing, AFL-CIO
In her role at the largest federation of unions in the United States, Estrada is dedicated to facilitating cross-movement organizing in a way that's never been achieved at scale and fulfilling a future of unprecedented union growth. She seeks to strengthen strategic national organizing campaigns with an industry, sector and geographic approach. Estrada joins the federation at a time when the labor movement is working to create good union jobs, honing our work on racial justice, benefiting new communities and protecting our planet.
Before her role at the AFL-CIO, Estrada was vice president of the UAW. She also served as a member of the board of IndustriALL Global Union and as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. However, Estrada is first and foremost known as an organizer and brings 26 years of labor movement experience with the UAW, holding every position from the lead organizer in successful organizing campaigns on the ground to the vice president of organizing, where she oversees complex strategic organizing and contract campaigns.
Cindy started as a member organizer in the UAW and went on UAW staff in 2000. She was first elected UAW vice president in 2010 and began directing the union's UAW Independents, Parts and Suppliers (IPS)/Competitive Shop Department, Public Sector and Health Care Servicing Department and the Women's Department. While in that role, Estrada also led negotiations for the Michigan Coalition of State Employee Unions, providing historic agreements protecting health care and establishing vital programs addressing privatization and workplace democracy for over 35,000 state employees.
As director of UAW Independents, Parts and Suppliers/Competitive Shop Department, Estrada proudly honored the reason Walter Reuther urged the department's establishment in 1968: to use the UAW's parts worker density to establish minimum industry-wide compensation standards in IPS contracts. This principle is rooted in the idea that companies should compete against one another on the quality and delivery of products, not against each other, to drive down wages and benefits. This resulted in breakthrough agreements in seating and other major auto component part industries.
Four years later, she became the first woman and first Latina to lead the union's General Motors Department. In her 3nd term she led the Stellantis department, Organizing, Higher Education and Womens; Departments.
The longtime organizer and activist is involved with many labor and community organizations. Estrada is a proud member of UAW Local 174. She is the proud mother of twin sons, stepmother to four and grandmother of six.