Our Team

WHO WE ARE

Meet the officers and staff on Michigan AFL-CIO’s team. The Michigan AFL-CIO is staffed by a team of folks dedicated to improving the lives of working families, bringing economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our state and the nation.

Courtney Towsley

HUMAN RESOURCES SPECIALIST

Bill Elliot

FACILITIES MANAGER

Chris Palette

NATIONAL AFL-CIO SENIOR STRATEGIST & DATA TEAM LEAD

Luke Canfora

NATIONAL AFL-CIO SENIOR FIELD REPRESENTATIVE

Kelsey Heck Wood

WORKING MICHIGAN DIRECTOR

Trent Varva

REGIONAL FIELD COORDINATOR (HURON VALLEY & MONROE-LENAWEE)

Advocates

Michigan AFL-CIO Advocates is our public advocacy nonprofit organization. Our mission is to unite labor leaders, policy makers, and the general public to educate and advocate around policies, programs and projects that can bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to communities across Michigan.

Jasmine Kaltenbach

Executive Director

Jasmine Kaltenbach was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan where she comes from a family of union members. While attending the University of Michigan, Jasmine participated in student activist movements on campus, in College Democrats, and wrote for the MichiganEnsian yearbook. She graduated from the Ford School with a BA in Public Policy, focusing on the Economics of Poverty and Inequality.

She ran a competitive mayoral race in Jackson, Michigan and has experience in sales, field organizing, event planning, and fundraising. She continues to consult campaigns on field, finance, and communications. Jasmine is also a presenter at Great Lakes Political academy on Coalition Building, Coordinating, and Outreach to Partner Organizations and Progressive Internship Programs: Best Practices.

She is excited to work at the Michigan AFL-CIO advancing pro-labor municipal policies that will help Michigan’s working families. Jasmine is a member of the National Writers Union.

Labor Foundation

The Michigan AFL-CIO Labor Foundation is our affiliated charitable nonprofit organization. Our mission is to curtail generational economic and social injustice through long-term investment in the memorialization, education, and association of the Michigan labor movement within our communities.

Workforce Development Institute

The Michigan AFL-CIO Workforce Development Institute is our affiliated nonprofit developing the next generation of Michigan workers. Our mission is to combat economic and environmental injustice by connecting the unemployed or underemployed with the training and resources necessary to find gainful employment and transition to a cleaner, greener economy.

Chong-Anna Canfora

Chief Executive Officer

As the Executive Director of the Workforce Development Institute (WDI), Chong-Anna and her colleagues work closely with the WDI Board of Directors to provide direction and leadership on a variety of workforce development grant programs and supportive services. Before joining WDI, Chong-Anna served as Executive Director of the Michigan Community Action Association, representing a statewide network of anti-poverty non-profit organizations.

Chong-Anna served as US Senator Debbie Stabenow’s Mid-Michigan Regional Representative, where she acted as liaison to provide strategic coordination of federal resources supporting workforce development programs, energy, environment, and higher education issues.

She later served as the Director of Rapid Response for the Michigan Department of Labor, leading the state’s Dislocated Worker Team to deploy a mix of public and private resources, including Trade Adjustment Assistance, Workforce Investment Act funding and Emergency Grants to assist workers impacted by mass layoffs during the Great Recession. She and her team partnered with local workforce development boards throughout Michigan to successfully usher more than 100,000 workers through the No Worker Left Behind re-training program.

From her years as a union member and working on both the state and federal level with organized labor advocates, policy makers, and forward-thinking business leaders, she knows how labor standards contribute to thriving communities by raising workers’ pay and benefits and improves their safety on the job.

Chong-Anna is part of an expert team of workforce development professionals committed to collaborating with communities to meet the challenges of emerging workforce issues and implementing innovative solutions that help bring people out of poverty, back into the workforce, and into the middle class.

She is proud to be a part of the Michigan AFL-CIO WDI’s efforts to stand with industry leaders and policy makers who support family-sustaining jobs.

Colleen Sullivan

DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Annette Donnelly

FISCAL / CONTRACT MANAGER

Walter R. Lodes

DIRECTOR APPRENTICESHIP & TRAINING

Southwest

Battle Creek, Coldwater, Kalamazoo, and Three Rivers

Samuel Dougherty

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, SOUTHWEST

Blaine Farr

PROGRAM MANAGER

Sandra Payne

PROGRAM TECH III

Julie L. Gregory

Program Tech III

Michelle Fowler

PROGRAM TECH III / CAREER COACH

Karen Knox

CAREER COACH

Megan Tappenden

CAREER COACH

Nikki Lumsden-Romeri

CAREER COACH

Brianna Ward

CAREER COACH

Tina Ferguson

CAREER COACH

Trent Bronsink

CAREER COACH

Southeast

Highland Park and Detroit

Kevin Weeks

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, SOUTHEAST

Sherry White

PROGRAM MANAGER

Beverly A. Hogan

CASE MANAGER

Kenneth Miller

BUSINESS SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE

Regina Jones

BUSINESS SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE

Bethany Smith

PROGRAM ASSISTANT

Vanessa Morrer

GREETER

Training Division

Kiah Esaw

ACCESS FOR ALL PROGRAM MANAGER

Shandra Dunn

RECRUITER

Ron Merritt

SENIOR CASE MANAGER

Daniel Mahoney

ACCESS FOR ALL CASE MANAGER JACKSON

Theresa Olvera

CASE MANAGER

Si’Eirria Edmonds

LEAD RECRUITER

Vanessa Lee

CASE MANAGER

Courtney Alexander

RECRUITER

Errin Whitaker

CASE MANAGER

Ivy Chandler

CASE MANAGER

Angela Haynes

RECRUITER

Rayonte Bell

RECRUITER

Instruction Division

JoAnn Bailey

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER

David Gregory

INSTRUCTOR

Malik Rollins

INSTRUCTOR

Tyrese West

INSTRUCTOR

Zachary El Amin

INSTRUCTOR

Theodore Spencer

INSTRUCTOR

Jim Dravenstatt-Moceri

INSTRUCTOR

John Perkins

INSTRUCTOR

LaTasha Smith

INSTRUCTOR

Carol Cool

INSTRUCTOR

Larry Tolbert

INSTRUCTOR

Linwood Bailey

INSTRUCTOR

Community Services

The Michigan AFL-CIO Community Services Department represents the partnership between the Michigan AFL-CIO and the Michigan Association of United Ways. The convening provides education, training, and service opportunities for union members to join with local United Ways in developing powerful responses to challenges faced in communities across Michigan.