sarah Fowler
Senior Deputy Counsel, SAG-AFTRA

Sarah Fowler is Senior Deputy General Counsel at SAG-AFTRA, the union representing approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, new writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals. She is an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Law School and USC Gould School of Law, where she teaches a course on the intersection of labor law and the entertainment industry.

Before joining SAG-AFTRA, Sarah was an entertainment litigator, handling right of publicity and privacy lawsuits mostly on the talent side. She started her career as a general business litigator at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett, representing clients in securities, antitrust, false claims act, copyright, and contract dispute cases.

John Browning
Professor, Faulkner University & Former Appellate Justice

kevin Furgal
General Counsel, Halycon

Iacopo Sanatori
Professor, Universita Degli Studi di modena e Reggio Emilia

Richard Bales
Professor, Ohio Northern University

Justice Browning serves as chair of the State Bar of Texas Taskforce for Responsible AI and the Law. He has authored multiple articles on artificial intelligence and its implications for the legal profession. His writing has received several awards, including four Burton Awards for Distinguished Achievement in Legal Writing and the DRI’s G. Duffield Smith Outstanding Publication of the Year Award. He has been honored with lifetime achievement awards for contributions in legal writing and ethics professionalism, continuing legal education, and litigation.

Kevin Frugal is General Counsel for Halycon Tech, Inc., a cubsersecurity company specializing in anti-ransomware. Halycon has recently completed a $100 million dollar Series C funding round. The company has officially reached unicorn status, valued at $1 billion dollars. Kevin’s role is cross functional ranging from employment, compliance, intellectual property, contract/sales, and corporate governance. Halycon uses cutting edge artificial intelligence, and is a big proponent of integrating technology into the workplace especially in the space of contract life management. Halycon is a global company, with employees and customers all over the world.

Professor Sanatori received a PhD in Labor Law and Industrial Relations at the University of Bologna. His research interests include EU Labor Law, freedom of association and collective bargaining, law and technology, the regulation of new forms of work and well-being and inclusion at the workplace. He has been the principal investigator in several international research projects co-funded by the European Commission.

Professor Bales teaches a wide variety of ADR and Labor/Employment courses, Torts, and Civil Procedure. He has published more than 100 scholarly articles and authored or co-authored 10 books on a variety of topics related to labor/employment/ADR. He teaches regularly in China at China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing) and Peking School of Transnational Law (Shenzen), and has been a Fulbright Specialist at Monash University (Kuala Lampur, Maylasia) and University of Tarumanagara (Jakarta, Indonesia). He is also a Labor Arbitrator.

tanya Hernández
Professor of Law, Fordham University

Professor Hernández teaches Anti-Discrimination Law, Comparative Employment Discrimination, Critical Race Theory, The Science of Implicit Bias and the Law: New Pathways to Social Justice and Trusts & Wills. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School. She is an internationally recognized comparative race law expert and Fulbright Scholar visiting the Université Paris Quest Nanterre La Défense, in Paris, and the University of the West indies Law School, in Trinidad. Professor Hernández is alos a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute, and the Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisdprudencia y Legislación. Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of its annual 100 Most Influential Hispanics and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander awarded her a Commendation for “extraordinary contributions to anti-racism.” Professor Hernández’s scholarly interest is in the study of comparative race relations and anti-discrimination law, and her work in that area has been published in numerous academic articles and news outlets.

Catherine Fisk
Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Arti Ferrera
Sr. Deputy City Attorney, City of San Jose

Catherine Fisk teaches Employment and Labor Law at UC Berkeley and serves as Faculty Director of both the Berkeley Center for Law and Work and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. A leading scholar and author, her work focuses on labor standards, workplace speech, and labor relations reform. She is active in public service through amicus advocacy, advisory and nonprofit board service, and labor arbitration. Before academia, she practiced appellate and union-side labor law in Washington, D.C., and clerked on the Ninth Circuit.

Arti Ferrera is an Attorney, DEI leader and Human Resources Consultant based in Northern California. Since graduating from California Western School of Law in 2011 with a concentration in Labor and Employment Law, Arti has gained over thirteen years of experience practicing Workers’ Compensation and Labor and Employment Law in the private and public sector. She has represented clients through trial and at administrative hearings, arbitration and mediation. Arti has saved millions of dollars for her clients by way of fierce advocacy and creative settlements. She has a long-standing commitment to promoting diversity in the legal profession as a Senior Deputy City Attorney at the City of San Jose, she founded the San Jose City Attorney’s Diversity an Inclusion Committee, which was the recipient of the 2024 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award by the International Municipal Lawyer’s Association. Arti is active on various committees and is passionate about doing work that benefits youth in underserved communities.

Sandra Babcock
Cornell law School

Kit Johnson is the High Roff Professor of Law and Thomas P. Hester Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of law. Her research, broadly speaking, focuses on the intersection of immigration law and the U.S. business interests, as well as issues related to the overlap between criminal law and immigration enforcement. She is the author of two open-access casebooks on immigration and crimmigration, which have been adopted by law schools nationwide. Prior to academia, Professor Johnson generally practiced commercial litigation with Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, in Los Angeles. She previously served as a law clerk to the Honorable Pamela A. Rymer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Robert C. Broomfield of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.

Professor Johnson’s Keynote will address the significant rile of undocumented workers in the U.S. Labor market, nothing undocumented workers alone comprise over 5% of the national labor market and nearly 10% of the California labor market. She will offer key insights and a unique proposal to the strategic use of the LLC in response to the growing undocumented labor force.

michelle Kellogg
Labor Relations Advocate, UCSD Health

Louis Cholden-Brown
Sr. VP Government Relations, Moonshot strategies

Jonathan Harris
Professor of Law, loyola marymount University

Michelle Kellogg is a labor relations advocate for UC San Diego Health. She received her Juris Doctor from California Western School of Law and passed the California Bar in 2020. UC San Diego Health is a leading academic medical center comprising three hospitals and numerous clinics-which she plays a pivotal role in fostering productive relationships between the institution and its workforce. With experience and an in depth understanding of labor and collective bargaining dynamics, Ms. Kellogg manages daily interactions with six major unions representing approximately 19 bargaining units, managing day-to-day relationships, including informal conversations, grievance resolution, litigation, and bargaining efforts for balanced and effective labor relations.

Louis Cholden-Brown is an East Coast–based political and legislative strategist and labor organizer. He helped launch the nation’s largest legislative union, represents hospitality, gaming, and building service worker unions, and previously served as Special Counsel at the United Federation of Teachers. Louis authored legislation protecting workers. His worker rights scholarship has appeared in the Richmond Public Interest Law Review, Fordham Urban Law Journal, and the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal and he also publishes extensively on federal constitutional law and state and local government.

Jonathan Harris’s publications have appeared or are forthcoming in various prestigious Law Review Journals and his article, Consumer Law as Work Law, 112 Calif. L. Rev. 1 (2024), was selecte for the Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum. A prior article, Unconscionability in Contracting for Worker Training, brought national attention to Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPS) that require workers to pay to quit and are used as workarounds to non-competes. He is a Sr. Fellow with the Student Borrower Protection Center and a past grantee of the UC Student Loan Law Initiative. Professor Harris is also a peer-review referee for the Yale Law Journal. His writing has been cited by federal entities including the FTC in its rule banning non-competes, the CFPB, and the Senate Banking Committee. Professor Harris is the immediate past chair of the AALS Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law, and an executive committee member of the AALS Section on Employment Discrimination Law. Professor Harris clerked for Judge James E. Graves, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit while teaching at Mississippi College School of Law. He began his legal career as a Skadden Fellow, focusing on the intersections of Employment and Consumer Law.

thalia Rofos
Partner, O’Hagan Meyer

Thalis Rofos is a partner in the Orange County office at O’Hagan Meyer. She represents clients in a variety of employment matters including discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation, harrassment, and the like. She also regularly defends employers in wage and hour class actions and PAGA actions. Thalia has experience defending clients in numerous forums, including state and federal court, and in front of state and federal administrative agencies. In addition to her litigation work, Thalia provides advice and counseling services to employer clients seeking to ensure legal compliance with their employment policies and practices and minimize their future risks of liability. Thalia strives to ensure clients are apprised of changes in state and federal employment laws across the country, updated administrative agency guidance on existing employment laws, and new case law impacting interpretation of state and federal laws.

Jason Murtagh
Partner & Chief employment chair, Buchanan

Morgan Suder
Partner, Wilson Turner Kosmo

Christian Morris
Owner/Trial Attorney, Christian Morris trial attorneys

Jason’s expertise includes commercial litigation and products liability, employment litigation, risk management and protection of trade secrets. He has represented clients in matters involving employee raiding and recruitment, privacy and theft of trade secrets, wrongful termination, constructive discharge, defamation, fraud, consumer protection and breach of contract, and has conducted numerous internal employment investigations. Jason drafts and negotiates employment agreements and handbooks and contracts Jason handles cases in state and federal courts and has won an appellate argument before the U.S. Supreme Court. Jason is uniquely positioned to help clients with the challenges posted by California law.

Morgan’s practice is focused on representing employers in wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, failure to accommodate, and wage and hour litigation. Morgan practices in both state and federal courts. She has also represented clients in charges filed with Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Morgan serves on the San Diego Chapter of the Federal Bar Association’s Advisory Baord from 2024 to 2026. Previously, Morgan served 4.5 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Christian is a personal injury trial attorney and owner of CMTA, an all female trial firm. Over the last several years she has received over $40 million in verdicts. She is licensed to practice law in Nevada in state and federal courts. Christian holds bar licenses in CA and NJ and has passed the NY State Bar. In 2013, Christian was accepted to the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyer’s college, and she continues her work with the Gerry Spence Method on the Ranch in WY. She teaches nationally on trial advocacy and law firm structure. She also works on consumer legislation and has testified in front of the Assembly and Senate Judiciary Committee. Christian was voted Nevada’s Trial Lawyer of the Year by the NV Justice Association for 2019. She was the second woman in twenty-two years to receive the honor. Christian also serves on the Board of Governors for the American Association of Justice. She has conducted jury trials and bench trials and has published decisions by the NV Supreme Court.