An endowed public interest law talk, "Fighting for Civil Rights and Worker Protections: Confessions of a Washington Insider," will take place Tuesday, March 29, at 4 p.m. in the Stein Mancuso Amphitheater, Room G90, Myron Taylor Hall, at Cornell Law School.
The Annual Cyrus Mehri '88 Public Interest Lecture will be given by Gregory Watchman '85, executive director, Government Accountability Project (GAP), a nonprofit whistleblower advocacy group and law firm.
A Washington, D.C., attorney with 20 years of experience in employment law and policy, Watchman has done public service stints as a top Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) official at the U.S. Department of Labor, chief labor counsel to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor and civil rights counsel to the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor.
In his current position at GAP, he works with whistleblowers to advance corporate and governmental accountability on a broad range of public-interest issues. Most recently, he and the organization have worked with Federal Drug Administration whistle-blower David Graham to warn the public about the health risks of certain pharmaceutical drugs.
Watchman also directs legislative campaigns, litigation and whistleblower advocacy at GAP and advises companies and workers on corporate accountability issues under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted in the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom accounting debacles.
On Capitol Hill, Watchman worked extensively on the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and he drafted legislation and developed hearings on a broad range of employment law issues, such as OSHA reform, collective bargaining, the minimum wage and the use of contingent workers.
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