Interim Chair, American Rights at Work Board of Directors

Dr. Martinez Ortega currently serves as the Vice President for Policy & Advocacy and Washington Office Director of PowerPAC.org. In this role she works closely with civil rights partners, labor unions, think tanks, and progressive organizations to advance a public policy agenda that can meaningfully meet the economic challenge of the Great Recession. In her current work she draws on her years of experience as the founding Research Director at American Rights at Work, the nation’s leading workers’ rights advocacy and research organization, where she and her teams to provide analysis and technical assistance on a wide variety of legislative, legal, and research matters relating to workers’ rights, including advocacy for the Employee Free Choice Act.

For over two decades, Dr. Martinez Ortega has worked for a more just and inclusive America. Teaching health policy at a College of the Holy Cross, number crunching on insurance coverage issues at the DHHS’s Center for Cost, Finance, and Access, representing clients with legal claims against sweat shop owners and human smugglers in El Monte, California as a law firm associate, and serving as a Special Assistant to Senator Alan Cranston are just a few of the ways that JMO has worked for social justice. Over the years, her expertise on working people, Latinos, and immigrant populations has informed the work of numerous organizations and major donors.

Dr. Martínez Ortega is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law. She earned her Ph.D. at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University where she was awarded the Minkoff Prize for Best Health Economics Dissertation. She is a member of the California Bar.

Julie serves as Chair of Board of Directors for the Mary's Center, the DC region’s leading social service agency and health center serving the Latino, low income, and immigrant populations.  She is Treasurer of the Progressive Majority Board of Directors, a Member and Guest Editor of the Labor Studies Journal Editorial Board, and has recently served as a board member of the National Labor and Employment Relations Association and President of its DC Chapter. She is an Independent Labor Rights Expert on the Workers’ Rights Consortium Advisory Council, and a member of the Kellogg Foundation Fellows Leadership Alliance.

Dr. Martínez Ortega is originally from the Southside of San Antonio, Texas and is the daughter of an IAM retiree. She now lives in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC with her husband, Joseph Sheehan, a New Zealand transplant and Systems Analyst Consultant at the World Bank. Their son, Carlos, is a first-grade student at Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS, a Cub Scout with Pack 98, and he loves baseball and soccer. The family is actively involved in Sacred Heart Catholic Church.