Executive Officers

Lorena Gonzalez has dedicated her career to expanding workers’ rights through organizing, politics, and legislation. From transforming the San Diego region as head of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, to passing landmark labor laws in the State Assembly, to her historic leadership of the California Federation of Labor Unions, Lorena has relentlessly championed the cause of the working class.

Her efforts have achieved groundbreaking advances for millions of working Californians—including paid sick leave for every employee in the state, overtime pay for farmworkers, and the strongest laws in the nation against worker misclassification and wage theft. These historic victories established California at the forefront of labor policy and set a national agenda on workers’ rights. As both a legislator and labor leader, she has been a leader in tackling emerging technology in the workplace, including creating protections against dangerous warehouse production quotas at Amazon and leading the fight to establish guardrails for the use of AI. She currently serves as the National Co-Chair of AFL-CIO State Federation AI Task Force.

Lorena was raised by a single mom who worked as a nurse and a father who immigrated from Mexico to work in the strawberry fields of San Diego County. Her first summer job was working at the Community Services arm of the Labor Council, providing support to striking workers. She is a graduate of Stanford University, and earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from UCLA.

In 2022, Lorena became the first woman and first person of color to be elected as President of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO. Under her leadership, the Federation has built a stronger, more accessible Labor Movement through prioritizing all forms of organizing and building solidarity across unions. She has revived the Member to Member political program to build engagement and power for all Union families. Lorena consistently and unapologetically ensures that the voices, needs, and rights of all workers remain at the forefront of public discourse in California.

Jeffery M. Freitas was elected CFT President in March 2019 after serving as CFT Secretary-Treasurer for eight years. He is the first openly LGBTQ+ member to become President of the CFT. Freitas has been a dedicated advocate for members for over two decades. Before moving into statewide CFT leadership, he served as president of the Carpinteria Association of United School Employees, AFT Local 2216, and as a vice president of the CFT EC/TK-12 Council.

As a secondary math teacher and CFT member in the Carpinteria Unified School District, Freitas created the district’s first English Language Learner Algebra class and the school’s first Multicultural Studies class. During his tenure as local president, he organized classified employees into the local union, ensuring unity for fair and equitable contracts.

His advocacy for public education, workers, and social justice continues through his roles as a vice president on the AFT Executive Council, as the Secretary Treasurer of the California Federation of Labor Unions, as the Vice President of the Equality California Institute, and a board member the California Governor’s Council for Career Education.  At AFT, he also is the chair of the LGBTQIA+ Task Force.

Freitas attended West Point from 1988 to 1990, then finished his education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.Ed., and a teaching credential. He lives in the Sacramento area with his husband, Doug MacLeod, a retired elementary school teacher.

Yvonne Wheeler was elected to serve on the California Federation of Labor Unions’ Executive Council in 2022, and was then elected to serve as Secretary-Treasurer on July 16, 2024.

A committed labor, civil rights, and community activist, Yvonne Wheeler has spent her life championing the rights of working people and is continuing that tradition as the elected President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the second largest Central Labor Council in the country.

Growing up as the daughter of a longtime union activist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the Civil Rights Movement, she applied the principles of direct action and civil disobedience when the school district refused to provide school buses for Wheeler and her classmates at desegregated Baton Rouge High School after the 1965 Desegregation Decree. After a few arrests, she compelled the school to provide buses – but she didn’t stop there.

Her dedication to justice continued well beyond her Southern University studies when she became a telephone operator at General Telephone Co. (GTE),  currently Frontier Communications. It is here where she challenged inept leadership at her local union, became a union steward and an elected executive board member. Her fearlessness as a rank and file union member propelled her to various leadership roles including becoming the first African American elected as President of the Communications Workers of America Local 9586, President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (an AFL-CIO-sponsored group) before becoming the 1st Vice President of the California State A. Philip Randolph Institute, and Co-Chair of the Los Angeles Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in 2003, championing the plight of immigrant workers.

Her career has always been dedicated to ensuring that everyone is treated justly, at their workplace and beyond. Today, she continues the legacy of so many leaders before her as the first African American Woman to lead as President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

Kathryn Lybarger was elected to the Executive Council of the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO in July of 2012, and elected President of the Federation in February of 2015.

A professional gardener by trade, she took her first union job at San Francisco State University in 1999, and has been a gardener at UC Berkeley since 2001.

In 2011, Lybarger was elected President of the University of California system’s largest employee union—AFSCME Local 3299—representing more than 22,000 workers at UC Campuses, Medical Centers and Research laboratories across the state.

Under Lybarger’s leadership, Local 3299 has become one of California’s most dynamic and effective fighting unions—growing its membership by 45%, waging the first ever statewide UC Hospital strike, and delivering historic new contracts that dramatically increased wage, benefit, and staffing standards for UC service and patient care workers.

As Local 3299 President, Lybarger helped lead the effort to enact Proposition 30 in 2012, and remains one of California’s staunchest advocates for renewed state investment in Higher Education and greater accountability from public university administrators.

She also serves as an International Vice President of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), where she helped America’s third largest union organize nearly 100,000 new union members in the face of growing attacks against public sector workers.

The daughter of a unionized civil servant and a unionized public health nurse, Lybarger learned the importance of leading by example in the fight for working families at an early age. And from leading picket lines and organizing campaigns to walking precincts for pro-labor candidates, she has stayed true to those values—earning the California Labor Federation’s Annual “Shoe Leather” award in 2014.

Lybarger earned her BA from Earlham College and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.  She is a married mother of two children and resides in Berkeley.