The National Employment Law Project (NELP) today announced three senior policy appointments that advance the organization’s sharpened strategic focus. Through research, policy innovation, and advocacy, these nationally recognized leaders will help develop the next generation of solutions to raise job quality, strengthen worker protections and enforcement, and modernize support for workers during job transitions, including those which are AI-driven. As nationally recognized experts, they will play a key role in advancing the pioneering research and high-impact advocacy of the preeminent workers’ rights organization.
- Rob Asaro-Angelo joins NELP as Senior Policy Fellow for Worker-First Protections.
- Michele Evermore returns to NELP as Senior Policy Fellow for Economic Security and Worker Transitions.
- Paul Sonn becomes NELP’s new Senior Policy Expert for Wages and Affordability.
“We are thrilled to have such extraordinary leaders as Rob, Michele, and Paul taking on these significant new roles for NELP,” said Rebecca Dixon, NELP’s President & CEO. “Among the nation’s most renowned worker advocates, each is an accomplished architect of both visionary policies and winning campaigns. Together, they will be the nucleus of a team that advances transformative policies for workers across the country.”
As Senior Policy Fellow for Worker-First Protections, Rob Asaro-Angelo will lead research and policy innovation focused on strengthening state enforcement systems, combating wage theft and labor standards violations, improving protections for temporary and vulnerable workers, and developing practical innovations that help state agencies maximize the effectiveness of existing enforcement capacity. Rob is a nationally recognized public sector executive and labor policy leader. From 2018 to 2026, Rob served as Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) under Governor Phil Murphy, where he guided the state’s diverse workforce services and protections programs. Under Rob’s leadership, NJDOL implemented groundbreaking protections like a $15 minimum wage, earned sick leave, equal pay, expanded paid family leave, a temporary workers’ bill of rights, domestic workers’ bill of rights, pay and benefits transparency, anti-wage theft and apprenticeship requirements for public construction.
Michele Evermore will lead NELP’s efforts to modernize social insurance systems and protections, with a primary focus on Unemployment Insurance (UI) and strengthening job transitions as Senior Policy Fellow for Economic Security and Worker Transitions. One of the nation’s leading authorities on UI, Michele is also senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance. At the U.S. Department of Labor in the Biden administration, Michele served as Deputy Director for Policy in the newly formed Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization. Most recently, she was a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a visiting non-resident fellow at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, and a visiting faculty at the University of Massachusetts Labor Center. Michele returns to NELP, where her earlier work led to historic expansions of unemployment assistance for workers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul Sonn will lead NELP’s work advancing the next generation of wage and affordability policy solutions, including strategies that help wages keep pace with the cost of living and improve job quality, and develop innovative state and local policy approaches that expand economic security for working people as Senior Policy Expert for Wages and Affordability. Paul is NELP’s long-time state policy program director, and the director of the NELP Action Fund, NELP’s 501(c)(4) partner organization. He has been a leading policy advisor to the minimum wage and living wage movements, helping to design and successfully defend the first city minimum wage laws in the U.S., and supporting many campaigns to raise state minimum wages, including the Fight for $15. Paul has recently spearheaded state and local efforts to enact just cause job protections and guardrails for tech and AI in the workplace. Before joining NELP, Paul was the founder and co-director of the Economic Justice Project at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, and a Skadden Fellow and then assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
About NELP
Founded in 1969, the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a leading advocacy organization with the mission to build a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Together with local, state, and national partners, NELP advances its mission through transformative legal and policy solutions, research, capacity building, and communications. NELP’s victories over the last decade have impacted the lives of an estimated 100 million workers and their families. NELP leads and collaborates in fights for higher pay and just benefits, secure and safe jobs, and support at each stage in a worker’s life. For more information, visit the website: www.nelp.org.
