Sheri Davis-Faulkner

Sheri Davis-Faulkner co-directs WILL Empower and is the Senior Program Director with the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. She previously served as the Director for the Westside Communities Alliance in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. There she built an alliance between the campus community and a network of community partners on Atlanta’s westside. Davis-Faulkner also worked with SEIU District 82, Justice for Janitors Campaign, as a Union Representative for university workers as well as a Grievance and Arbitrations Coordinator. She successfully led collective bargaining campaigns at George Washington University and Howard University and served as a Steering Committee member for DC Jobs with Justice.

A native Atlantan and interdisciplinary scholar-activist, Davis-Faulkner completed her doctorate in American Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University. She also holds a M.A. in Women’s Studies from The Ohio State University and B.A. in Psychology and Political Science from Spelman College. Her entry point into the labor movement was as a graduate student activist and leader at OSU during the CWA Local 4501 strike and thirty-day sit-in in 2000. This led to an opportunity working on the Global Justice Campaign as an intern in the Field Mobilization division of the National AFL-CIO.

Davis-Faulkner also worked abroad with an international organization to end violence against women. She is a member of the Crunk Feminist Collective and serves on the board of the National Black Worker Centers and the planning committee of the emerging Advancing Black Strategists Initiative.