Camille Rivera-Westin

Focus areas: Political Theory & Progressive Policy, Labor Relations, Strategic Messaging, Electoral & Issue based campaigns, digital & relational organizing and collective coalition building

Camille Rivera comes to Columbia University with long and deep ties to the labor and issue campaigns movement, both in New York City and across the country. An Afro Latina, Born and Raised in the Bronx, Camille’s values intertwine with how she drives campaigns. Camille received her bachelor’s degree at the  City of University of New York (CUNY) and received her Masters’s in Public Policy at the New York University Wagner School of Public Policy. Rivera has offered her political commentary on CNN, NY1, BBC, and WNYC’s The Takeaway. She has written op-eds for publications including for Colorlines, and has been profiled by publications including mitú, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, and other media outlets across the country. She is a frequent commentator on NY1.

Camille’s work has included serving as a Senior Advisor on the New York operation for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Presidential campaign, and working with SEIU to build out the National Latino Civic Engagement Table, overseeing its Latino independent expenditure program in key battleground states, including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Camille also worked as a consultant for Charles Booker for the United States Senate in Kentucky. She also serves as an advisor for the National Working Families Party and helped to lead key district attorney races in Michigan and Minnesota and LA and has served as a senior advisor on various political campaigns.

Rivera is the former national & legislative political director at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, RWDSU, where she was responsible for overseeing the union’s political, legislative, and electoral work on behalf of its members and leadership. During her tenure, she led campaigns to ensure retail owners provided fair and stable work hours to their employees, Camille worked with other labor unions to pass a precedent-setting increase for airport catering workers and worked with the state legislature to pass a historic piece of legislation that would eliminate tipped wages for car wash workers and increase their pay to $15 an hour. When New York announced a deal that would have given Amazon billions in tax subsidies without any commitment to allow workers the right to organize, Rivera helped RWDSU lead the fight to ensure that workers and the community were allowed to have a voice in the process.

Rivera brings decades of experience in government, policy, and politics. Before her work at RWDSU, Rivera spent the 2016 presidential campaign as national deputy political director for the Service Employees International Union, working to get out the vote in swing states like Nevada, Colorado, and Florida and running its massive $4 million Latino GOTV effort.

She also dealt directly with one of the most pressing policy issues in the city while serving as a top staffer in the New York City Department of Homeless Services. Camille was also the Director for United NY, helping to build up the city's low-wage worker rights campaign, and was one of the coordinators of the first fast-food worker strikes in NYC, as well as the Fight for 15. Camille's work on low-wage workers is documented in the book New Labor in New York.

Education

• MA, New York University School of Public Policy Wagner
• BA, City University of New York at Queens College