Vicki Shabo, J.D., M.A.

Vicki Shabo is an expert on workplace gender equity and work/family policies in the United States, including paid family and medical leave and equal pay. As a strategist and analyst, she is steeped in both policy details and the political dynamics that typically surround policymakers’ consideration of these policies. Over the last decade, Shabo has been deeply involved in the development and enactment of federal, state and local workplace policies affecting tens of millions of working people. She interacts regularly with federal and state policymakers, business and industry leaders, advocates and researchers who share her interest in promoting more equitable workplaces.

Shabo is currently Senior Fellow for Paid Leave Policy and Strategy at New America, a Washington, D.C. think and action tank, where she is focused on charting a path to winning paid family and medical leave for every working person in the United States, no matter where they live or work or the job they hold. From January 2010 until March 2019, Shabo led the National Partnership for Women & Families’ workplace policy program, where she and her team helped win dozens of state and local paid sick days, paid family leave, equal pay and pregnancy accommodations laws and moved national paid family and medical leave from a fringe issue to the mainstream of political and policy debates. Previously, she practiced law, she served as a pollster for political candidates, media and nonprofit organizations, and worked on Capitol Hill.

Shabo has testified several times in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures and before 2016 Democratic Party’s platform committee.

Her perspective and analyses have been featured in opinion pieces and hundreds of news stories in national, regional and state outlets, including on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR and MSNBC, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, CNN.com, Roll Call and The Hill. She has also given spark talks at the MAKERS women's leadership conference in Los Angeles, California.

Shabo is a native of Los Angeles and has lived as an adult in the District of Columbia, Michigan, North Carolina and Utah. She is a graduate Pomona College (B.A. politics, American Studies), the University of Michigan (M.A., political science) and the University of North Carolina School of Law (J.D.). She is also a board member of the First Shift Justice Project, which seeks to empower pregnant women and parents in the District of Columbia by asserting their workplace rights.