Elaine Kim

Elaine H. Kim spent over a decade on the leadership team at 32BJ SEIU, the largest property service union in the country, representing janitors, security officers, airport workers, and residential workers, among others. While at 32BJ, she designed and led a year-long strategic planning process, resulting in a comprehensive ten-year plan to organize workers and continue to win for 32BJ’s 175,000 members. Elaine also served as 32BJ’s Assistant to the President for Communications, in which she drove and implemented a multi-year change process.   

Elaine started organizing low-income people around welfare issues and has worked as a trainer, facilitator, and consultant to a broad range of community-based social justice organizations in the New York City. Now a Senior Extension Associate with Cornell University’s Worker Institute, Elaine is on the facilitation team for the Union Leadership Institute, the National Labor Leadership Initiative and anchors the Managing with Labor’s Values course offering. Born in Ohio and raised in Michigan, Elaine lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their twins and does what she can to stay connected to her activist queer and Asian American communities.