Who We Are

Good Jobs First

Employment Opportunities

Affiliates:
Corporate Research Project
Good Jobs New York

Staff:                                                                                                                                         

Greg LeRoy, Executive Director

Philip Mattera, Research Director and the Director of the Corporate Research Project

Michelle Lee, Communications and Development Coordinator

Leigh McIlvaine, Research Analyst

Caitlin Lacy, Research Analyst

Tommy Cafcas, Research Analyst

Bettina Damiani, Project Director of Good Jobs New York
Allison Lirish Dean, Research Analyst at Good Jobs New York

Good Jobs First
Good Jobs First is a national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. We provide timely, accurate information on best practices in state and local job subsidies, and on the many ties between smart growth and good jobs. Good Jobs First works with a very broad spectrum of organizations, providing research, training, communications and consulting assistance.

Corporate Research Project
The Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First, assists community, environmental and labor organizations in researching and analyzing companies and industries. The Project is designed to be a resource to aid activism. Consequently, our focus is on strategic research, i.e., identifying the information activists can use as leverage to get business to behave in a socially responsible manner

Good Jobs New York
Good Jobs New York, our partnership project with the Fiscal Policy Institute, promotes policies that hold government officials and corporations accountable to taxpayers, particularly when economic development agencies give expensive subsidies to large corporations that threaten to leave New York City. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, GJNY has also tracked rebuilding dollars, documenting that most federal resources have benefited big businesses, not community priorities such as job creation or affordable housing.

More about the Staff of Good Jobs First and its Affiliates
(e-mail addresses are listed with (at) instead of @ to thwart spamming)

Thomas Cafcas
Research Analyst at Good Jobs First
tommy(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Thomas joined Good Jobs First after working as an economic development consultant analyzing demographic and economic trends for community plans primarily in Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He has also worked in land use planning and zoning in Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas. He holds a Bachelors and Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

 

Bettina Damiani
Project Director of Good Jobs New York
bettina(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Bettina joined Good Jobs New York with experience in community organizing, progressive public relations and political fundraising. Through her work with GJNY, Bettina was a founder of the Liberty Bond Housing Coalition, which advocates for the use of post-September 11th financing to create affordable housing for moderate and low-income New Yorkers. She has a B.A. in Communications and Peace Studies from Manhattan College and a Masters of Urban Affairs from Hunter College.

 

Allison Lirish Dean

Research Analyst at Good Jobs New York

adean(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Allison joined Good Jobs New York with a background in community organizing, policy analysis, and investigative research and reporting. Most recently she has collaborated with the Pratt Center and Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) on issues of gentrification and displacement in Downtown Brooklyn. Allison is currently completing a Masters in Urban Planning at Hunter College/CUNY.

 

Caitlin Lacy
Research Analyst at Good Jobs First
caitlin(at)goodjobsfirst.org

Caitlin joined Good Jobs First after working at a non-profit organization providing research support services to labor unions. She has a B.S. in Economics and a B.A in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

 

Michelle Lee
Communications and Development Coordinator at Good Jobs First
mlee(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Michelle has worked in fundraising and development at various non-profit organizations in Washington, DC for numerous years. Prior to joining Good Jobs First, Michelle was the Development Coordinator at a media monitoring organization and an environmental organization focusing on raising funds through foundation and individual philanthropy. Michelle has a B.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and a Masters in Public Administration from George Mason University.

 

Greg LeRoy
Executive Director of Good Jobs First
goodjobs(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Dubbed "the leading national watchdog of state and local economic development subsidies" and "God's witness to corporate welfare," Greg founded Good Jobs First in 1998. He has been writing, training, and consulting on development issues for state and local governments, labor-management committees, unions, community groups, tax and budget watchdogs, environmentalists, smart growth advocates, and associations of public officials for more than 25 years. A nationally prominent speaker and frequently quoted news media source, he is the author of The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005) and No More Candy Store: States and Cities Making Job Subsidies Accountable (1994).

 

Philip Mattera
Research Director of Good Jobs First and Director of the Corporate Research Project
pmattera(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Phil has been doing strategic corporate research for labor, environmental, public-interest and other activist groups around the country for the past two decades. Before that he spent a decade as a business journalist. He is a licensed private investigator and the author of four books on business, labor and economics. He is a long-time member of the National Writers Union and serves as the union's chief book grievance officer.

 

Leigh McIlvaine
Research Analyst at Good Jobs First
leigh(at)goodjobsfirst.org

 

Leigh joined Good Jobs First after completing a Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. She has formerly worked as a consultant in economic development and program evaluation for a rural development NGO in Kerala, India. Leigh recently carried out broad analyses of job creation in sustainable manufacturing industry subsectors for an economic development program jointly supported by the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and the Blue Green Alliance.