Worker-Centered Policy Research & Consulting

Build sustainable organizations with pro-worker policies through research, development, and implementation support. Prevent staff burn-out with just and equitable practices.

Reflect the better world you are building.

I am an operations professional, policy researcher, organizer, and educator. I believe that justice-oriented groups must model the society and economy they want to create, making it possible for passionate workers to collaborate and flourish.

Offerings

  • Policy development and implementation support for employee handbooks reflecting equitable pay, gender and family-conscious leave policies, and healthy work culture

  • Organizational structure and digital communication audits for meaningful teamwork and collaboration

  • High quality, mixed-methods labor market and public policy research

  • Strategic planning and leadership development for sustainable work

  • I do not provide legal services or advice

Core Values

  • Organizational strength relies on transparency, worker equity, pluralism, and the ability to directly address the impacts of race, gender, and economics on people’s relationship to work.

  • Workplace policies should reflect organizational values, be flexible and iterative, and prevent staff burnout.

  • US worker protections are weak. The strength of your organization or company depends on policies that go further than what compliance-centered human resources offer.

About Toby

I spent the last 15 years moving between the labor movement, the academy, employment law, faith-based organizing, and the food industry.  I was a youth and peer organizer facilitating large groups, designing trainings and decision-making processes, and coaching other organizers. I worked as a grant writer before working in employment law (not a lawyer), which provided a background in federal and local policy and common violations. As a scholar I focused on policy implementation and how power moves through public institutions and the nonprofits they rely on. My topics ranged from the history of nurses’ unions to the political geography of policing to the role of volunteers in the child welfare system.

I see my peers working in mission-driven organizations and across the food industry unable to sustain themselves and their work due to a multitude of societal factors. I see workplaces as ground zero for building people power, democratic practices, and a better world. Human-centered research and creative, collaborative policy development are key to that process.

work:

All Due Respect, Diaspora Alliance, Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, Center for Urban Research, Outten & Golden LLP, IfNotNow, Beloved Brooklyn, Hadar Institute, Youth Action Youthbuild, Bronx Community Solutions, American Sustainable Business Council, UNITE HERE!, and Oberlin Student Cooperative Association

learn:

CUNY Graduate Center, Oberlin College, OfMany Institute for Multifaith Leadership at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, Movement Netlab, Avodah

From clients

“We started from nowhere with an employee handbook. Toby was able to help structure the project and bring her expertise to ensure it was a success. She is truly collaborative in her methods and I am looking forward to working with her again!” - Zoe Vallas, Director of Project and Operations, Diaspora Alliance