Our Team

Pem Brown (he/him) manages WorkLife Law’s financial and organizational operations.

Pem has twenty years professional experience in the progressive non-profit sector spanning fundraising, communications, policy analysis, people/human resources, and operations. Pem spent more than twelve years working full-time at M+R, a professional services firm that supports mission-driven non-profits. Prior to M+R, Pem spent five years working with NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts (now Reproductive Equity Now) spearheading much of their fundraising and digital communications.

Pem has a joint Master in Public Policy and Master of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where he wrote his capstone paper outlining a policy framework to support care work in Massachusetts. Pem also has a Bachelor of Arts in French and European Studies from Amherst College.

Cynthia Thomas Calvert (she/her), a nationally-recognized employment lawyer, researcher, and writer, is a senior advisor to the Center on family responsibilities discrimination (FRD). She co-authored, with Joan Williams and Gary Phelan, the only legal treatise on FRD: FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES DISCRIMINATION (Bloomberg BNA 2014 & supplement 2016). She was the Center’s deputy director until 2010, when she founded Workforce 21C to help employers manage today’s evolving workforce. Through consulting and training, she works with companies to prevent FRD, advance women, implement nonstigmatized flexible work programs, and create inclusive workplace cultures. Cynthia co-founded and co-directed the Project for Attorney Retention with Williams. She and Williams wrote Flex Success: The Lawyer’s Guide to Balanced Hours (WLL Press 2011) and Solving The Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm’s Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP 2004). She has been quoted in and written articles for numerous national publications, and speaks frequently about FRD, bias, flexible work arrangements, diversity and inclusion, and advancement of women. Cynthia practices employment law in the District of Columbia and Maryland. She was a partner with the D.C. litigation firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, LLP (now part of Baker Botts LLP). She later had her own employment law practice in which she counseled businesses on compliance. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and a former clerk for the Honorable Thomas Penfield Jackson (D.D.C.).

Juliana Franco (she/her/ella) is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for WorkLife Law. As a first-generation American and grand-daughter of a Bracero, Juliana has dedicated herself to supporting the rights of workers from underserved backgrounds, particularly immigrant, low-wage communities.

Juliana leads the Center’s project Dar a Luz: Legal Rights for Farmworkers in Pregnancy and Postpartum, a partnership with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) that works to expand access to income replacement and leave in California for farmworkers facing exposure to pesticides during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. Growing up, Juliana heard stories about the dehumanizing conditions her grandfather faced as a farmworker in California, so she has been motivated by her late grandfather’s lessons and her own experience as someone who has been pregnant and is now a mother. She believes that providing farmworkers with options during pregnancy and postpartum so they can protect their health and their children’s health will disrupt a harmful cycle that disproportionately impacts these largely immigrant and Indigenous-language-speaking communities.

Juliana has helped hundreds of workers who have called WorkLife Law’s legal helplines, and many more by collaborating with the California Employment Development Department (EDD) to change the broader landscape of workers’ rights in California. Through trainings and clinics, Juliana has educated workers, health care providers, advocates, and the community about reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and breastfeeding, leaves of absence, anti-discrimination, and wages. Juliana has developed bilingual trainings for community health workers that make legal information and supports more accessible to workers facing language barriers and geographic isolation.

In 2020, just days after giving birth to her son, Juliana was honored as one of the first recipients of the Jackie Speier Women of Courage Award. She was recognized for her tireless work to protect the legal rights of low-wage workers, including the services she provided on WorkLife Law’s COVID-19 free legal helpline and her efforts to support California farmworkers. Juliana’s dedication to advocating for pregnant, postpartum, and caregiving workers has also been recognized by her peers – she was recently elected to serve on the Steering Committee for the California Work and Family Coalition, a statewide alliance of advocates dedicated to making paid leave and workplace supports accessible to all caregivers.

Prior to joining WorkLife Law, Juliana worked as an attorney in the Wage Protection and Work and Family Programs at Legal Aid at Work (formerly the Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center). Juliana has been published in the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health and Public Health Reports, and has been featured on the Milk Minute, a lactation education podcast. Juliana is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and received her J.D. from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly known as the University of California, Hastings College of the Law) with a concentration in health law and policy through the UCSF – UC Law Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy.

Rebeca Garcia (they/she) is the Communications and Grants Manager at the Center for WorkLife Law. They work closely with senior leadership to develop and execute WorkLife Law’s communications strategy and grant fundraising goals.

Prior to joining WorkLife Law, they worked as a communications specialist and workers’ rights policy advocate with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), a community organization advancing economic and social justice for working class and immigrant community members. During their time with CAUSE, Rebeca sharpened their writing skills for a variety of audiences, from indigenous farmworkers to grasstops advocates to county boards of supervisors. Rebeca also created graphics, produced accessible language, and managed the social media for Dar a Luz: Legal Rights for Farmworkers in Pregnancy and Postpartum, a collaborative initiative between WorkLife Law and CAUSE.

Rebeca graduated with a degree in Communication Studies from Westmont College, where they actively organized with their peers around matters of racial justice. Rebeca is a neurodivergent, non-binary Oaxacalifornian (which refers to their transnational identity), and these intersecting identities drive them to fight for a just community for all people.

Leah Kennedy (she/her) is a Staff Attorney at WorkLife Law, where she manages and provides services on our free legal helpline and serves workers who need assistance with employment issues related to pregnancy, abortion and pregnancy loss, lactation, and family caregiving. In addition, Leah develops know-your-rights resources and practical tools for workers and their allies.

Leah is passionate about worker rights and empowering vulnerable individuals to understand and assert their rights to be free from discrimination in the workplace, and to thrive not only as workers but as members of their families and broader communities. Prior to joining the Center, Leah worked at plaintiff-side employment law firm Katz Banks Kumin LLP, where she represented employees in discrimination, wage and hour, wrongful termination, and whistleblower retaliation matters. In law school, Leah worked at Legal Aid at Work, where she served in the National Origin and Immigrants’ Rights Program; Stanford’s Community Law Clinic, where she represented clients in housing, social security disability, and criminal record expungement matters; and the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, where she advocated for tenant protections during the COVID-19 pandemic. She founded the Racial and Disability Justice Project, a pro bono project at Stanford Law School centered on empowering Latinx families in attaining services for their children with disabilities. She also served as a judicial extern for Judge Robert E. Bacharach for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal for the Tenth Circuit.

Leah received her JD from Stanford Law School in 2022 with highest pro bono distinction. Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Leah received her bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from the University of Oklahoma in 2016. Prior to law school, she worked as an immigration paralegal. In her free time, Leah enjoys writing songs and fostering cats.

Nanjibah is a 3L at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she has served as President of Women of Color and currently participates in the Youth Advocacy Clinic. Before law school, she worked as a paralegal in mass tort defense.

Nanjibah earned her B.A. in Philosophy from Virginia Commonwealth University. Outside of law school, she enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with her little sister.

Jessica Lee (she/they) is Co-Director of WorkLife Law, which she leads with Co-Director Liz Morris. For nearly three decades, WorkLife Law has built the legal protections that safeguard economic security during pregnancy and family caregiving. Under their shared leadership, the organization is deepening those protections and putting them within reach of the most marginalized workers and students, so that all people have the freedom to care for their loved ones and their own health without sacrificing their livelihoods. 

Jessica co-founded The Pregnant Scholar at WorkLife Law, the nation’s first legal resource center dedicated to the rights of pregnant and parenting students, whose policies have been adopted at hundreds of institutions nationwide. Before The Pregnant Scholar, these rights were largely unknown, and the discrimination students faced went unnamed. Thanks to Jessica’s work, these rights are now part of the national conversation on gender justice. 

Jessica was also instrumental in winning landmark federal protections for nursing workers through the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act. She works to build legal protections at every level of government: legislation she co-drafted has been introduced in statehouses across the country, and she advises federal and state enforcement agencies on how civil rights laws should be interpreted and enforced. 

Jessica is a nationally recognized expert on the laws at the intersection of employment, education, and maternal and infant health. She trains advocates, institutions, and families across the country, turning complex legal rights into tools thousands of people can use. This work is grounded in what she learns from the students and workers who call WorkLife Law’s free legal helpline, where nine out of ten callers secure the accommodations and leave they need to stay healthy and safe. 

Jessica’s work has been covered by press from the New York Times to the BBC, and her writing has appeared in publications ranging from Harvard Business Review and the Chronicle of Higher Education to law reviews and medical journals. 

Prior to joining WorkLife Law, Jessica was a Bertha Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where her work spanned humanitarian law violations, discrimination, and freedom of speech and information. Her earlier work includes research and advocacy in support of women in the criminal justice system and women facing discrimination and human rights violations internationally. 

Jessica earned her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Liz Morris (she/her) is Co-Director of WorkLife Law, which she leads with Co-Director Jessica Lee. For nearly three decades, WorkLife Law has built the legal protections that safeguard economic security during pregnancy and family caregiving. Under their shared leadership, the organization is deepening those protections and putting them within reach of the most marginalized workers and students, so that all people have the freedom to care for their loved ones and their own health without sacrificing their livelihoods. 

Over the past decade, Liz has helped win the most significant expansion of workplace rights for pregnant and nursing workers in a generation. She coauthored WorkLife Law’s 2019 report Exposed: Discrimination Against Breastfeeding Workers, which provided the rallying cry for the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, and was a leader in the campaign that won its passage in 2022. She also helped lead the successful advocacy campaign for strong federal regulations implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Liz continues to strengthen both laws by advising litigators enforcing them and training healthcare providers to help their patients use them. 

Liz is a nationally recognized expert in the employment laws intersecting gender, reproductive health, and family care. Legislation she drafted with her colleagues to protect family caregivers from discrimination has become the template for bills in statehouses around the country. She has testified repeatedly as an expert witness before the California legislature, and government agencies and courts have adopted novel legal theories developed by Liz and the WorkLife Law team to expand legal rights. All of this policy advocacy is grounded in the experiences of the people who receive support on WorkLife Law’s free legal helpline, where nine out of ten callers secure the accommodations and leave they need to stay healthy and safe. 

Liz has been published in numerous medical and law journals on pregnancy, breastfeeding, and work. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Harvard Business Review, and Slate, and she is regularly quoted by outlets from the Washington Post and PBS NewsHour to Ms. Magazine and Elle. 

In the first part of her career, Liz represented working people in class action lawsuits challenging abusive employment practices and unions in the labor movement. She co-taught Advanced Employment Law for six years at UC Law SF. Liz is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College and received her J.D. from Stanford Law School. 

Liz’s greatest achievement, challenge, and source of joy has been raising her two children with her husband.