The PRO Act

Alexander Colvin, Ph.D., ’99, is the Kenneth F. Kahn ’69 Dean and the Martin F. Scheinman ’75, M.S. ’76, Professor of Conflict Resolution at Cornell University’s ILR School.

Dean Colvin’s research and teaching focuses on employment dispute resolution, with a particular emphasis on procedures in non-union workplaces and the impact of the legal environment on organizations. His current research projects include empirical investigations of employment arbitration and cross-national analysis of labor law and dispute resolution. Dean Colvin is the co-author of “An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations” (with T. Kochan and H. Katz) and of “Arbitration Law “( with K. Stone and R. Bales).

Dean Colvin received his J.D. in 1992 from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in 1999 from Cornell University. He received the 2003 Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) and the 2000 Best Dissertation Award from the IRRA for his dissertation entitled “Citizens and Citadels: Dispute Resolution and the Governance of Employment Relations.” Before joining the faculty of the ILR School, Dean Colvin taught at Penn State University from 1999 to 2008.

Cathy Creighton is Director of the ILR School’s Buffalo Co-Lab. Prior to assuming this role, Ms. Creighton taught classes to workers interested in becoming union representatives through the ILR Extension’s Labor Studies Program. A graduate of the ILR School, she has been involved with ILR’s High Road Fellowships program since its inception in 2009, serving on the program’s advisory board. Ms. Creighton, who helped draft Buffalo’s living wage ordinance, is former chair of the city’s Living Wage Commission; a co-founding partner of the law firm Creighton, Pearce, Johnsen & Giroux; and director of the Erie County Fiscal Stability Authority. She also serves on the Coalition for Economic Justice Workers’ Rights Board and is a former board member of the Lawyers Coordinating Committee of the AFL-CIO and the Labor and Employment Relations Association of Western New York.

Thomas Perez served as the U.S Secretary of Labor from July 2013 to January 2017 and as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from February 2017 to January 2021. Mr. Perez was assistant attorney general for civil rights from 2009 to 2013 and is a Georgetown University Politics Fellow at the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Mr. Perez is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He clerked for Judge Zita Weinshienk in Colorado before serving as a federal civil rights prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Perez next worked for Senator Ted Kennedy and then served as the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services in the final years of the Clinton administration.