Former U.S. Special Representative for International Labor Affairs
Kelly M. Fay Rodríguez served as the lead diplomat for international labor policy for the Biden-Harris Administration at the U.S. Department of State. As the President's Special Representative for International Labor Affairs, she led the Department's Office of International Labor Affairs, where she launched and implemented the first-ever Presidential Memorandum to promote labor in U.S. foreign policy and trade. Previously, she was a Trade and Labor Oversight Counsel for the Democratic majority of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means. In this role she led labor-trade policy work, including the enforcement of the USMCA's Labor Rapid Response Mechanism, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and Section 307 of the Tariff Act (prohibiting imported goods made of forced labor), as well as U.S. trade agreements and preference programs. From 2012 to 2020, she worked for the AFL–CIO and Solidarity Center on domestic and global trade union programs. More recently, she led the Center’s flagship program in Bangladesh from 2018 to 2020, which included legal support, trade union capacity-building, and strategic international supply chain advocacy. From 2012 to 2017 in Washington, D.C. she worked on strategic local capacity-building, immigration reform, and political campaigns for the AFL-CIO executive offices. Before law school, she worked at the New York State Attorney General's Office in the Labor Bureau on minimum wage and hour law enforcement, and for SEIU Local 32B-J union members in New York City on immigration legal services. Fay Rodríguez also worked with the Organization of American States on a dozen international election observation missions to various countries across Latin America and the Caribbean.
She earned her law degree from City University of New York School of Law, where she was a Haywood Burns Human and Civil Rights Fellow and completed the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She comes from a proud union and immigrant family, with roots in Worcester, Massachusetts and the Dominican Republic.
