Jobs, Justice, and Economics

Plenary Speakers

Kim Bobo is the Executive Director and founder of Interfaith Worker Justice, the nation's largest network of people of faith engaging in local and national actions to improve wages, benefits and conditions for workers, especially those in the low-wage economy. She was named one of Utne Reader's 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" in 2009. Prior to Interfaith Worker Justice, Kim was a trainer for the Midwest Academy, and Director of Organizing for Bread for the World. She writes a column for the online magazine Religion Dispatches.

She is co-author of Organizing for Social Change, the best-selling organizing manual in the country, and the author of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It, the first and only book to document the wage theft crisis in the nation and propose practical solutions for addressing it.

Thomas Hyclak has been a member of the economics faculty at Lehigh University since 1979 and was department chair from 1999 to 2006. He served the College of Business and Economics as Interim Dean. His research has involved a number of empirical studies of the determinants of wage levels, unemployment and earnings distributions in urban labor markets. Professor Hyclak has also published several studies of the impact of human resource management innovations and industrial relations activities on the performance of workers and their organizations.

He has published numerous academic papers on regional unemployment, wage and income inequality, gender and racial wage differentials and human resource management practices. Notably, he is the author of "Rising Wage Inequality: The 1980s Experience in Urban Labor Markets" as well as the textbook "Fundamentals Of Labor Economics," with co-authors Geraint Johnes and Robert J. Thornton. Tom Hyclak earned his B.A. and M.A. from Cleveland State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as a member of the Allentown Urban Observatory and the Board of Directors of the Community Action Development Corporation of Bethlehem, which fosters entrepreneurship and business development in South Bethlehem. He lives in Bethlehem with his wife Jean, daughter Anna, son Ben, and retired racing greyhound, Glory.

Panel Participants

• Ryan Knepp is Coordinator of the Lehigh County Conference of Churches Permanent Employment Program which provides a variety of employment-related support services to individuals who are chronically unemployed.

• Anthony "Larry" Quintana is a Workforce Navigator with the Pathways to Green Jobs program which assists Allentown residents in finding employment in the Green Jobs industry. Pathways offers training, career planning, Green Jobs workshops, skills assessments, job placement assistance, on-the-job experience, community services and supportive services.
  After completing military service in 2000, Larry and his wife moved to eastern Pennsylvania where he held supervisory jobs with several companies. In 2008, when Larry was laid off from his job as operations data technology supervisor with an insurance service company in Wyncote Pa, he remained unemployed for over a year. Larry volunteered with Careerlink¨ and was eventually hired as an Education and Training Specialist. He recently left that position to take on the responsibilities as a Workforce Navigator with Pathways to Green Jobs.

• Cecilia Rodriguez, CareerLink, Employment Counselor

• Tom Sedor, CareerLink, Business & Industry Representative

Workshop Leaders

Emma Cleveland is a Community Organizer with the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project in Allentown. Before coming to the Lehigh Valley in November 2009, she two spent years working with nomadic artistic, ecological and circus collectives in South America. Emma has also worked with the Immigrant Solidarity Network (Red de Solidariad Inmigrante) and was involved in Food Not Bombs and independent media and radio projects in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She holds a B.S. in sociology from James Madison University.

Bob Wendt serves as Regional Coordinator for the Business Retention and Expansion Program (BREP) funded through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is responsible for the Lehigh Valley's outreach efforts to more than 800 employers annually to determine their critical issues and needs, and links them with the appropriate local, state and federal resources for further assistance with issues related to workforce training, access to capital, and technology needs. Bob is also a Research Consultant at Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. and Secretary of the Economic Development Council of the Lehigh Valley.

Bob Walden has been involved in many areas of peace and justice work, especially as an organizer, educator, and public policy advocate. While teaching college physics and math in Cincinnati, Ohio, he was engaged in several urban renewal projects, and while living near Eugene, Oregon, he worked ecumenically on food, hunger, and public policy issues. Bob and his family live in Bethlehem, PA, where he works as an engineering consultant. He currently chairs the Justice and Advocacy Committee of Lehigh County Conference of Churches and the Franconia/Eastern District Mennonite Peace and Justice Committee (PJC). He maintains web pages for both organizations, and edits the PJC newsletter "Peace and Justice News".