Please allow me to introduce myself
I have a resume and bio that you can find on the home page. I thought, however, that a little context and overview would be helpful.
When I left government a few years ago to return to the private sector, I wrote a piece about why I was making the move; starting, yet again, a new career; and what value I thought I had to add to the practice of law. If you’re interested, its’ not a long piece and you can find a link to it from the home page.
The shorter version, though, is that my father is a small business owner in Brooklyn. I worked for him throughout school and even went back as an adult for a while. While his choice of manufacturing in New York City is questionable because it’s like a lightning rod for government oversight and inflated costs, it was no less painful watching him try to navigate the streams of inspectors and regulators. It was seemingly impossible to keep up with the barrage of inquiries, deadlines, demands, and visits and still run a business that makes payroll every week.
And today it’s more complicated. All businesses of all sizes are subject to the human rights laws and must train their entire workforce every year about their responsibilities under those laws. The City Council has passed laws that do everything from imposing penalties for scheduling changes to requiring that certain employers demonstrate “just cause” before firing one of their workers. On the State level, the Legislature is taking measures to pass a law that will give workers the right to file a lien on an employer to secure the accusation of owed wages. On the Federal level, just last month the US DOL changed its rules regarding independent contractors.
It’s hard to keep up with the changes and developments – it’s even harder to comply. Employers need to know what’s going on. Businesses need to learn how to meet their obligations within this matrix and still achieve their desired results.
As it turns out, my career has been varied and diverse enough that I am singularly situated to help navigate that.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and though I left for college, I moved back home and
went to Brooklyn Law School. My first job out of law school was with the Bronx District Attorney’s office which I left to join my father’s manufacturing business. Working with family being what it is, I left the company to return to government and took a position with the New York State Senate a few years later.
After an excursion into the world of lobbying and consulting, I took a position as an Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the New York Attorney General. It was 2007 and New York had just elected a Democratic Governor and Democratic Legislature for the first time in decades. They passed a series of laws that criminalized certain violations of the Labor and Workers Compensation Laws. As a former prosecutor, I was asked if I would take on prosecuting those new crimes. We made the first cases under the new laws and set new priorities for enforcement teams statewide.
When that Attorney General became Governor (a position he still holds as of this writing), I went with him. I was Deputy Counsel, then Special Counsel, then a Deputy Commissioner, for the New York State Department of Labor. My time there was spent spearheading the Governor’s Labor initiatives, and I was told to work on a shift in the Department towards policies and practices that were more inclusive of the business and employer communities.
I have used my interests and skills to help companies of all sizes and industries see their way through the fog of oversight and regulation.
How can I help you?
