Livia Lam

Livia Lam is a program officer on the Future of Work(ers) team. She leads the policy portfolio, which aims to support new policies and regulations at the federal, state, and local levels that increasingly protect worker rights and advance social protections.

Livia brings over two decades of experience developing and shaping economic policies to successful implementation. She has served more than 10 years in Congress, including as U.S. Senator Patty Murray’s legislative director and as senior labor policy advisor for the Committee on Education and Labor chairman George Miller. Here, she was the key architect and champion of a legislative proposal to reauthorize the nation’s federal job training programs, which led to the successful passage of the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act.

In the Senate, Livia served as a labor policy advisor for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairs, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Tom Harkin. She began her career in Congress as outreach director and legislative assistant to Senator Maria Cantwell.

Livia’s extensive policy background also includes researching education and labor issues at the Center for Work-Life Policy and the Learning Policy Institute. As a resident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, her work on redesigning workforce policy has been published in the California Law Review, Market Watch, The Hill, Real Clear Policy, Morning Consult and Law360.

She has also led government affairs in both the private and the public sector on federal policy. Livia was deputy director for Intergovernmental Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Barack Obama, a senior vice president at the public affairs consulting firm Strategies 360, and senior manager of community and government affairs at SEIU 775.

Livia holds a PhD in public and urban policy from The New School and a masters in public administration from Seattle University.