Cindy Chavez - Career After Politics

Career After Politics

After her time on the City Council, Chavez founded and was principal of California Leadership Services, offering clients comprehensive and diversified consulting services issues such as government relations, organizational development and nonprofit management.

Chavez became the Executive Officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council in March 2009. The South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council represents ninety unions and over 100,000 union members in Santa Clara and San Benito counties. For over 50 years the Labor Council has championed the cause of working families in the South Bay. The Labor Council's primary goal is to advance candidates, causes, and policies that benefit working families. It achieves this objective with a combination of activities, including community organizing, leadership training, campaigning, and issues advocacy. The Labor Council is proud to run the largest, most sophisticated, grassroots political campaign operation in the South San Francisco Bay area.

Chavez is also Executive Director of Working Partnerships USA, an independently funded social change organization founded by labor and community groups that develops and advocates for policies that benefit everyday people. Among its signature accomplishments are pioneering the Children’s Health Initiative, making Santa Clara County the first in the nation to provide health coverage to every child; winning a San Jose Living Wage ordinance and creating LeaderNet, the cornerstone of a range of leadership training programs that build the capacity and ability of working people to effectively represent their own interests in developing a fair and free society.

She recently worked as an instructor of local civics at her alma mater San José State University.