Previously, Suzanne was Roosevelt’s director of education, jobs, and worker power and the Great Democracy Initiative. Her research and writing focused on building a network of robust public goods—such as public higher education—and labor organizations that together can empower workers to counter corporate power in the labor market and public sphere.

Prior to joining Roosevelt, Suzanne most recently worked as a research analyst at SEIU 32BJ, where she built a program to organize workers in new residential developments. Suzanne holds a PhD in American history from Columbia University and earned her BA from Yale University. Her book, Divorce, American Style, won the American Society for Legal History’s Cromwell Dissertation Prize. As an undergraduate, in 2005, Suzanne was a founder of the Roosevelt Network.

From the moment she took the reins to lead the NLRB’s prosecutorial and enforcement activities, General Counsel Abruzzo has made it clear that the Agency is charged with enforcing a statute that is pro-worker. In fact, her first memo directed staff to consider cases that could be used to ask the Board to reverse legal precedent that doesn’t comport with the Agency’s mission, including cases that make it more difficult for workers to unionize, should they want to do so.

Under her leadership, she has issued legal guidance seeking to protect immigrant workers from employer retaliation and to apply Section 7 rights to college athletes. She has pushed for more robust remedies for labor law violations, including full make whole relief for victims of unfair labor practices. She has also dusted off underused legal tools in an effort to get workers promptly reinstated to their jobs after unlawful firings, including by seeking injunctions against high-profile employers in order to stop violative conduct aimed at chilling organizing activities. Abruzzo’s NLRB has embodied the Biden Administration’s whole-of-government approach in ensuring workers feel empowered to fairly and freely exercise their statutory rights without fear of retaliation. Before her current post, Abruzzo was Special Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at Communications Workers of America.

Alí R. Bustamante is the deputy director of the worker power and economic security program at Roosevelt, where he specializes on how public policy can structure markets around both economic and social value and empower Americans through the provision of public goods and stronger labor protections. Dr. Bustamante is an expert on labor, economics, and public policy and a native Spanish speaker. His research and analysis have been featured on The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, CNN, Forbes, Charities USA, and other media outlets.

Prior to joining Roosevelt, he served as chief economist at the Louisiana Workforce Commission, senior research associate at the Southern Economic Advancement Project, and as faculty at Florida International University, the University of New Orleans, and Loyola University New Orleans.

Dr. Bustamante earned a BA and PhD from the University of Miami, specializing in political economy. Born in Masaya, Nicaragua and raised in Miami, he now lives in New Orleans.

From 2021-2023, he served in the Biden-Harris Administration where he led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). At OIRA, he oversaw the policy review and approval of all significant federal regulations and played a lead role in the Administration’s efforts on equity, data and information policy, and reforming regulatory analysis. From 2018-2021, he served as President of Demos, a national racial justice think tank and advocacy organization that played a key role in combating voter suppression and developing and mainstreaming major policy ideas from climate justice to student debt relief to energy democracy.

He is the author of Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Civic Power (with Hollie Russon Gillman, Cambridge University Press, 2019). His popular writings have appeared in venues like The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Boston Review, Dissent, and The Washington Post.

​Diana’s research focuses on the regulation of work as a site where critical choices are made about the relationship between American economic commitments and its democratic ideals. Her recent scholarship has been published in the Yale Law Journal(opens in a new tab), the Yale Law Journal Forum(opens in a new tab), and the Emory Law Journal(opens in a new tab), among others. Some of her shorter pieces are available on the Law and Political Economy blog, examples include “Labor Bargaining and the Common Good(opens in a new tab)” and “Anti-CRT and a ‘Free Market’ in Racial Education(opens in a new tab).”

Before her return to academia, Diana represented labor unions and workers at the AFL-CIO, Altshuler Berzon LLP, and the California Teachers Association. She received her JD, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, from NYU School of Law, where she was also a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar. Diana clerked for Judge Theodore McKee on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Kimba Wood on the Southern District of New York.

She has worked as a union organizer for UNITE-HERE, coordinating with national campaigns and as a human rights litigator representing farmworker victims of trafficking as a David W. Leebron Human Rights Fellow at the International Rights Advocates. Prior to joining the legal academy, she practiced law in the Antitrust Practice Group at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC in Washington, DC, where she represented plaintiffs in antitrust class actions against pharmaceutical companies and employers. She is also a fellow at Yale University’s Thurman Arnold Project.