Director of Work Quality Tsedeye Gebreselassie Named to “40 Under 40” List

This April, NELP Director of Work Quality Tsedeye Gebreselassie was named to the New York University Law Alumni of Color Association (LACA) “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” list for 2018.

With NELP since 2009, Gebreselassie is a leading expert in employment law, focusing on minimum wage and labor standards policy and workplace standards enforcement. Formerly a senior staff attorney, she became NELP’s director of work quality in December 2017, following the organization’s restructuring into the four core program areas of work quality, work structures, work equity, and social insurance.

In addition to Gebreselassie’s leadership of the NELP work quality program, which includes the organization’s efforts to raise the minimum wage and enforce workplace standards nationwide, she is chair of the board for Fast Food Justice, a community organization of fast-food workers in New York City. She has appeared as a commentator in numerous outlets, including MSNBC, CNBC and PBS, as well as NPR, Marketplace, and CBS Radio, and she has been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Newsweek, and more.

Gebreselassie received her law degree magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern public interest scholar and articles editor on the Review of Law and Social Change, and she received her BA magna cum laude from Brown University. Prior to joining NELP, Tsedeye clerked for the Honorable Ellen Bree Burns of the US District Court of Connecticut. Prior to law school, she worked as a labor and community organizer for New York’s Working Families Party.

NYU LACA, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year, aims to promote and support the professional development and general advancement of NYU Law’s alumni and students of color, and seeks to more fully involve alumni, students, and faculty of color in the educational, social and intellectual life of the law school.