My name is Yana and I’m a labor and community organizer with almost 10 years of experience building power with working people across intersectional social justice fights.

I started organizing as a student in NYC’s public schools and was a founding member of a youth-led organization for integration & equitable access to education in NYC.

After graduating from public schools, I transitioned into labor organizing work, where I eventually found my passion of organizing rank-and-file workers and communities at the intersection of labor, environmental, and climate justice issues. As a college student at Cornell’s School of Industrial & Labor Relations, I convened a coalition of student climate justice advocates and local building trades/ construction union members to win “Green New Deal”-style policies that centered workers & unions at the County level.

Since then, I have organized unions in the food service & warehouse industries; founded a first-of-its-kind, dedicated labor & environmental justice program at a union-partnered workers’ center for warehouse workers; and designed + launched a young worker leadership program on climate justice with Texas union members from diverse industries including construction, fossil fuel, education, manufacturing, and more.

As the proud daughter of two working-class immigrants from Belarus, my commitment to the labor movement stems from my family’s personal experience of immigrant worker exploitation in the construction, service, & domestic industries. My commitment to environmental justice stems from growing up in a low-income, immigrant-majority neighborhood in Brooklyn that experienced uneven public disinvestment. And my commitment to climate justice is rooted in witnessing my extended family’s close relationship to the land in our home country as rural subsistence farmers & beekeepers.