About NELP

RaisetheMinimumWage.com is a project of the National Employment Law Project. Working with state and national advocates and legislators, the National Employment Law Project is committed to rebuilding the wage floor for low-wage workers in the US.

With our partners, we can provide strategic support, technical assistance, research, materials, and coordination for campaigns.

Contact:

For more information on raising your state minimum wage, please contact Paul Sonn or Jen Kern at the National Employment Law Project, at psonn@nelp.org or jkern@nelp.org.

Staff:

Jen Kern, Minimum Wage Campaign Coordinator

jkern@nelp.org
(202) 887-8202 x364
Washington, D.C. Office

Biography:

Jen recently joined NELP to coordinate work on building a campaign to increase the federal minimum wage. Jen’s background is in providing technical assistance and support to labor and community organizers for grassroots organizing campaigns around worker justice issues. For 15 years, Jen worked in the national office of ACORN, including ten years as the director of ACORN’s Living Wage Resource Center, which served as a clearinghouse for the national living wage movement and provided direct organizing support for the campaigns driving the effort. Immediately before joining NELP, Jen spent a year and a half at American Rights at Work on the campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, working to coordinate workers’ rights organizing strategies with state consultants, labor leaders, and allies on the state and national levels.

Education:

B.A., Grinnell College

Paul K. Sonn, Legal Co-Director

psonn@nelp.org
(212) 285-3025 x.351
New York City Office

Biography: 

For fifteen years Paul has worked on new approaches for promoting living wage jobs. His work has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and the New York Law Journal. From 1999-2008, he was co-director of the Economic Justice Project at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. From 1994-1999 he was a Skadden Fellow and then assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Education:

J.D., Yale Law School
A.B., Dartmouth College

Tsedeye Gebreselassie, Staff Attorney

tgebreselassie@nelp.org
(212) 285-3025 ext. 314
New York City Office

Biography:

Tsedeye joined NELP in 2008. She works on researching and promoting policy tools that create good jobs. Prior to law school, she worked as an organizer for New York’s Working Families Party.

Education:

J.D., New York University School of Law
B.A., Brown University

Jack Temple, Policy Analyst

jtemple@nelp.org
(202) 887-8202 x366
Washington, D.C. Office

Biography:

Jack provides writing, research, and communications support to NELP’s minimum wage campaign. Before joining NELP, Jack was a research analyst and blogger at Demos, where he focused on policies to promote upward economic mobility for low-wage workers in the U.S. His writing has also appeared in The American Prospect.

Education:

M.A., The University of Chicago
B.A., University of Michigan