Laine Romero-Alston is the Senior Advisor for Stakeholder Engagement and Strategic Partnerships in the Director’s Office of Trade and Labor Affairs of U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau for International Affairs (ILAB). She is a core member of ILAB’s Central America Working Group, supporting various planned activities focused on private and labor stakeholder engagement in Central America Forward.
Laine comes to USDOL after nearly 15 years in philanthropy, most recently at the Open Society Foundations where she was Acting Director of the Fair Work Division of the International Migration Initiative. Her work focused on building a vibrant movement and promoting effective policies that ensure the rights and protections of vulnerable workers in the global economy, including migrant workers, with a particular focus on the Americas. Prior to joining OSF in 2018, she was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation with the Quality Employment and Future of Work teams. Laine founded and co-chaired the Labor Innovation for the 21St Century (LIFT) Fund, the first of its kind collaborative fund between philanthropy and labor unions investing in innovative strategies to build power for workers in the changing context of work and the economy. She was also founder and served on the Executive Committees of both the Families and Workers Fund and Funders Organized for Rights in the Global Economy (FORGE) Funders, collaborative funds formed in the wake of COVID 19 to ensure workers rights and economic justice are central to a just and inclusive economic recovery in the US and globally.
Before her time at Ford, Laine was the Economic Justice Program Officer at the Solidago Foundation and See Forward Fund, and the Founder and Director of the Research and Policy Department of the Urban Justice Center’s Community Development Project in New York. Laine spent most of the 1990s in Mexico working with civil society organizations focused on popular education, community organizing, youth leadership, gender justice and worker rights. She holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and an M.S.W. from Hunter College with a specialization in Community Organizing and Planning. She is a mom of two young women and two pups, an aspiring gardener, and a slow but steady 5K jogger. She lives in the DMV area now after a long time in and around NYC.