Biography
Worker Power Director Nayantara Mehta joined NELP in 2015 as a senior staff attorney, focusing on policies that improve and expand workplace protections for low-wage and immigrant workers and on eliminating unfair barriers to employment for people with criminal records.
NELP’s Worker Power team includes a national program supporting worker centers and a California program supporting a statewide community-public agency partnership to challenge wage theft in seven industries. Nayantara also supports the efforts of NELP’s Work Structures team to advance policies that make work more stable and secure and to challenge policies and practices that abuse complex work structures to push responsibility and risk away from employers onto workers.
Nayantara joined NELP after almost nine years at Alliance for Justice, where she advised nonprofits and foundations on legal issues related to advocacy, lobbying, and electoral campaigns. During that time, she also spent two years as a fellow with the Women’s Policy Institute, a program of the Women’s Foundation of California, advocating on economic and reproductive justice issues in the California legislature.
Outside of NELP, Nayantara acts in an advisory role to the Forefront Project, which provides legal support to reproductive rights and justice organizations nationally. She served for six years, including two years as board president, on the board of directors of Oakland-based APEN (Asian Pacific Environmental Network), an environmental justice organization that builds leadership within immigrant and refugee communities and advocates for policies that make communities healthier and stronger. She also served for 11 years on the Executive Board of the Bay Area lawyer chapter of the American Constitution Society.
Nayantara is a proud member of the NELP Staff Association, NOLSW, UAW, LOCAL 2320.
Education
J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
M.A., University of Chicago
B.A., College of William and Mary
Pronouns
she/her
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