Yolanda Medina deJesus
Yolanda Medina deJesus is the Director of the Education and Leadership Training Department for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO which represents 1.6 million members in the US and Puerto Rico. Along with her leadership team, her major role is to carry out the department’s vision “to prepare members, leaders and staff to effectively lead the labor movement into the future. We shape and build powerful unions to be lasting vehicles for a just society that works for the common good and values workers’ rights and dignity in the workplace.” Throughout her twenty-eight years in the labor movement she has gained valuable experience in union and political organizing, strategic planning, women’s and organizational leadership development and training, and organizational development interventions and techniques such as conflict resolution, team performance, management and organizational assessments.
Yolanda entered the labor movement in 1988 as the director of a joint labor and state health department homecare training program in New York City where hundreds of home healthcare workers received mandated state certification to help them retain their jobs. Soon after she became the Education Director for labor partner in the program, District Council 1707, AFSCME. While managing DC1707’s adult education and labor programs in 1993 she attended the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute in Los Angeles, which prepared her to become part of the team of union organizers for the largest organizing campaign in Puerto Rico for public employees. With an increasing passion for organizing, she then became the first Latina to serve as the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute Eastern Region Director in 1998. This work afforded her the opportunity to help train and recruit hundreds of new organizers who found their calling in the labor movement. Yolanda received a M.S.in Education-Guidance and Counseling from Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York and a B.S. in Education and Spanish from Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island.
Follow Us