Debbie Berkowitz

Community Advisor

Debbie Berkowitz is a nationally recognized worker safety and health policy expert and advocate with over three decades of experience improving workplace safety. She supports the RESPIRAR project on policies and issues pertaining to farmworker safety and health.

Debbie is a worker safety policy consultant and a practitioner fellow with the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. As a fellow, she focuses on worker safety and health as part of a collective developing strategies and innovative public policy to improve workers’ lives.

Throughout her career, Debbie has collaborated with national and state partners to develop successful policies and campaigns that enhance conditions for vulnerable, low-wage workers in dangerous industries, including temporary workers. She has recently helped lead campaigns for stronger state and federal standards to protect workers from COVID-19.

Debbie was the worker safety and health program director at the National Employment Law Project for six years, where she collaborated with national and state partners to develop successful policies and campaigns that improved conditions.

From 2009 to 2015, she served as the chief of staff and senior policy advisor at the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Before this role, she was the safety and health program director at the National Employment Law Project. Debbie has also dedicated over two decades to working for and leading union-based safety programs, where she advocated and negotiated for improved safety conditions for meat and poultry workers.

Debbie has authored widely cited reports and research on worker safety issues, and her writing has been published in academic journals and media outlets. She has testified numerous times before congressional and state legislative committees and has received numerous awards, including the American Public Health Association’s Alice Hamilton Award.