Ms. Beard is currently an Industrial Hygienist in the Worker Education and Training Program of the Division of Extramural Research and Training (DERT) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH in Research Triangle Park, NC.  As an industrial hygienist, Ms. Beard is primarily responsible for coordinating, evaluating, and improving the nation-wide worker education and training program especially in the area of the Minority Worker Training Program (MWTP) pilot initiative. She has also worked in the Chemical Exposure and Molecular Biology Branch in DERT assisting with efforts to facilitate and coordinate translational research. Broadly defined, this refers to ensuring ongoing efforts in outreach, education, communication, information dissemination, prevention/intervention, and public health.

 

Ms. Beard designs and implements administrative guidance on the new pilot MWTP, as well develops and promotes environmental justice and brownfield programs for the Institute.  She was instrumental in coordinating the successful workshop on the 1995 Environmental Job Training for Urban Inner City Youth intended as an informational meeting to bring together organizations with interest in environmental justice and community outreach for the MWTP.  As a follow up to that meeting, she was the Planning Coordinator for the 1998 Environmental Job Training Summit in New Orleans.  The Summit was the largest and most diverse attended technical workshop for the Worker Education and Training Program with more than 160 participants.  

 

Building on her environmental and occupational health experience acquired while working in the Environmental Restoration and Industrial Hygiene & Safety Departments at Westinghouse Savannah River Company in SC, she has recently advanced into computer technology.  She now serves as a member of the Computer Committee for the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist, member of the DERT Database and Office Automation Committee and is a Web Page Developer for WETP.   She is also a member of the American Public Health Association.  

 

 

 

Steven Markowitz MD is a physician specializing in occupational and environmental medicine. Dr. Markowitz is currently Director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS) and Professor of Environmental Sciences at Queens College, City University of New York. He is also Adjunct Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he was on the full-time faculty from 1986 to 1998. He received his undergraduate education at Yale University and his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.  Dr. Markowitz is board-certified in occupational and environmental medicine and internal medicine.

 

Most relevant to the issue of immigrant occupational health, Dr. Markowitz is co-investigator, with Saru Jayaraman and the Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York and NYCOSH, of a NIEHS/NIOSH-funded environmental justice grant to document and intervene to improve the health and working conditions of immigrant restaurant workers in New York City. Previously, Dr. Markowitz and CBNS colleagues sponsored a medical screening project for immigrant WTC day laborers near Ground Zero in early 2002.

 

With the United Steelworkers International Union and the Atomic Trades & Labor Council, Dr. Markowitz currently directs the Worker Health Protection Program, a comprehensive medical screening program for former Department of Energy workers who built the nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States over the past 60 years. This program also sponsors the largest early lung cancer detection project in occupational health in the country through the application of low dose helical CAT scanning. To date, over 7,000 workers who were exposed to asbestos, uranium, and other lung carcinogens have been screened for lung cancer in this program.  

 

Dr. Markowitz directs the Queens College satellite clinical center of the Mount Sinai-based WTC Medical Monitoring Program and monitors nearly 1,500 WTC workers.

 

 

 

Is a Clinical Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Washington School of Public Health.  For eight years prior to assuming this position in January 2005 he was the Assistant Director for Industrial Safety and Health with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries.  This included responsibility for the state’s occupational safety and health program.

 

Dr. Silverstein originally came to the state of Washington in 1990 to work for the State Department of Health as State Health Officer.  He then spent two years in Washington, D.C. as Director of Policy for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and returned to the state in 1995.  Prior to these government positions, Dr. Silverstein was Assistant Director for the Occupational Health and Safety Department of the United Automobile Workers Union in Detroit, Michigan.  He worked for the UAW for nearly 15 years on a wide range of issues.

 

Dr. Silverstein also has practiced family medicine and occupational medicine in Michigan and California.  He holds degrees from Harvard University, Stanford Medical School and the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.  He is board certified as a specialist in occupational medicine.

 

Diana Cortez

 

Diana Cortez is the Area Director of the Tarrytown OSHA Office located in Westchester County, New York.  The Area Office covers The Bronx, Westchester and Rockland Counties.  She has a staff of 18 employees.  The Area Office activities include enforcement, cooperative programs and compliance assistance.

 

Ms. Cortez holds a BS in Safety Administration. She began her career with OSHA in 1980 as a Safety and Health Technician and was promoted to Compliance Safety and Health Office in 1981.  As a Safety Compliance Officer, she conducted field investigations at a variety of industrial and construction work sites and investigated occupational accidents, fatalities and catastrophes. She has held various positions within the Agency.  For 11 years she was the Assistant Area Director for Safety in the Bayside Area Office located in Queens and in the Tarrytown Area Office for 2 years. Ms. Cortez was appointed to the position of Area Director in 2003.

 

 

Paul Landsbergis, PhD, MPH, is Associate Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, with appointments in the Departments of Cardiology and Community and Preventive Medicine, and is the first author or co-author of over 50 articles in scientific journals. Dr. Landsbergis is a co-editor of “The Workplace and Cardiovascular Disease”, the first textbook on this subject, and a co-author of a recent comprehensive review of studies on job strain and cardiovascular disease.  He was invited by NIOSH to write and publish an extended review of its publication on the “Changing Organization of Work”, and he was the lead author of the first comprehensive review of the health effects of new systems of work organization. Dr. Landsbergis was a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on the Health and Safety Needs of Older Workers, the NIOSH NORA Intervention Effectiveness Research Team, and co-chair of the 4th International Conference on Work Environment and Cardiovascular Disease (in 2005). He is the Principal Investigator of several grant proposals on work organization, work stress, blood pressure, cardiovascular risk and ergonomics, among health care workers, autoworkers, locomotive engineers, and transit workers.

 

Veronica Session

 

Veronica Session switched to carpentry from a low-paying bank job 17 years ago and hasn't looked back since.  Her work as a journey level carpenter includes framing, woodworking, sheetrock, hardware, concrete and ceilings.  She is a shop steward, looking out for the carpentry crew as the eyes and ears of the union on construction sites.  She is also a Steering Committee member of the Women's Committee of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, the co-leader of the Habitat for Humanity women carpenters - coordinating teams of women carpenters to work on Habitat projects  - a middle and high school career day speaker for the carpenters, and a member of the women carpenters' education committee.

 

Emily Adeyanju is currently the manager of communications and special projects at the 1199SEIU Child Care Funds, where she oversees the Funds’ communication efforts, ensuring consistency in the delivery of the Funds’ message, and the accurate and effective conveyance of the Funds’ vision to the public. She also works to secure private and government funds to support program expansion efforts, to precipitate the development of new programs, and to promote the longevity of the Funds.

 

Prior to joining the Funds, Ms. Adeyanju served as the manager of major gifts at National Medical Fellowships (NMF), where she managed a major gifts program, working directly with the CEO and distinguished board members to redefine the organization's impact and strengthen its communication efforts. Among her achievements at NMF was the resurrection of the organization’s dormant newsletter, and the creation and management of one of the largest and most successful segmented appeals in the organization’s history.

  

Dr. Sherry Baron is the coordinator for Occupational Health

Disparities at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.  She was also leader of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) Special Populations at Risk team.  Her research at NIOSH has focused on field investigations and developing public health intervention programs for low wage and immigrant workers. Her work included a two year assignment at the Pan American Health Organization regional center on environmental health in Mexico, where she developed collaborative occupational safety and health training and research projects with the Mexican Health Ministry. She is a board certified physician in occupational and internal medicine.

 

Saru Jayaraman is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 1992 she founded Women and Youth Supporting Each Other (W.Y.S.E.), a national non-profit organization dedicated to providing young women of color with the resources, information and support necessary to think critically and take leadership in their communities for change. As Attorney/Organizer at the Workplace Project, a Latina/o immigrant worker organizing center, she created The Alliance for Justice, a law and organizing program that organized custodial, factory, and restaurant workers to fight for workplace justice. Most recently, together with workers from Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, she founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY), an immigrant workers' center focused on organizing immigrant restaurant workers all over New York City, particularly those displaced from the World Trade Center, and the families of restaurant worker victims of 9/11. Among other things, ROC-NY has organized workers to win workplace justice campaigns and launch their own cooperatively-owned restaurant. As a Professor of Political Science and Labor Law at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and New York University, Ms. Jayaraman has also just co-edited The New Urban Immigrant Workforce, (ME Sharpe, 2005). Her constant fight is for racial and economic justice domestically and globally.

 

Carmen Z. Calderon spent many years working in community based organizations and social service programs that included education, assistance and care for the people in her community of Williamsburg,

Brooklyn.  Ms. Calderon later went on to become a paralegal, workingwith Puerto Rican and victims of police brutality, lead poisoning ofchildren; and other injustices. Later Carmen had the opportunity to work with clients and attorneys in civil rights as the intake coordinator and organizer in: language access in schools, work and health care; removal of the navy from Vieques, PR; the Florida presidential election

challenges; housing discrimination; community gardens; and in Freehold, NJ defending the day laborers and tenants the town was discriminating against through the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). After 9/11 at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense, Projecto Ayuda was created to help the non-English speaking workers/survivors and families get the assistance they needed and were entitled to. The program grew, as did the needs of their clients, to include the rescue, recovery and clean-up workers that helped in the aftermath.  

 

As a result of Carmen's work after 9/11, and her close association with NYCOSH, it was an easy transition when she was hired by NYCOSH to work as their Occupational Health and Safety Specialist in the  Program and 9/11 Outreach.  At NYCOSH, Ms. Calderon has been able to reach out to community based organizations, day laborers and day laborer centers, unions, faith-based groups, and governmental entities to educate and work with the English and non-English speaking communities in New York and Long Island around issues of occupational safety and health. They are also working to ensure that those who helped in the clean-up and recovery of the City after 9/11 are aware of and are able to access the services available. Because of their work in the community, and because

of NYCOSH's long history advocating for workplace safety and health, they have ensured that the community's needs and rights are considered and respected.  The next big challenge that Carmen Calderon is looking forward to is bringing together leaders to build a workers' council to

be the voice of workers in NY.