Biography
Lynn Rhinehart is a senior fellow at EPI, where she works on labor and employment policy with a focus on unions and collective bargaining. Rhinehart returns to EPI after serving in the Biden administration as a senior counselor to the Secretary of Labor and Acting Secretary of Labor, advising them on issues relating to unions, collective bargaining, and labor policy, including the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment (vice-chaired by the Secretary of Labor).

Previously, Rhinehart was general counsel of the AFL-CIO from 2009 until July 2018. She joined the legal staff at the AFL-CIO as an associate general counsel in 1996. While at the AFL-CIO, she was the executive director of the Lawyers Coordinating Committee (LCC), a national organization of 2,000 union-side labor lawyers in law firms and legal departments. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO, Rhinehart clerked for the Honorable Joyce Hens Green of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor. Rhinehart has authored publications on enforcement of federal workplace safety laws, the contingent workforce, and other topics. 

Education
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
B.A., University of Michigan

Ihna Mangundayao joined EPI in 2021 as a policy assistant. She supported the policy team in managing EPI’s legislative and policy initiatives to build a more just economy. Prior to joining EPI, Ihna worked as a fundraising and management consultant for progressive nonprofits, and she worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Senate Budget Committee covering education, labor, and retirement security.

Ihna is a proud immigrant from Batangas, Philippines.

Education

Bachelor of Liberal Arts, Government, Harvard University Extension School (in progress)

Prior to rejoining EPI in 2022, Sanders worked at More Perfect Union, a nonprofit media advocacy organization focused on covering stories about labor, worker power, and the economy primarily through video, social media, and online reporting. Sanders also worked on the team at the Groundwork Collaborative, designing programs and developing policy-informed messaging to advance a strong progressive narrative on the economy.

Sanders originally joined EPI in 2017. She came to EPI after serving as a policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) Wage and Hour Division (WHD). At the WHD, she worked closely with agency leadership on issues including the future of work and employment, overtime pay regulations, communications and public engagement, strategic enforcement of labor standards, and more. Prior to joining DOL, Sanders led digital communications for the Religious Action Center, a faith-based advocacy organization.  

Education
B.A. East Asian Studies, Yale University

Celine McNicholas is the director of policy and government affairs/general counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that uses the power of its research on economic trends and the impact of economic policies to advance reforms that serve working people, deliver racial justice, and guarantee gender equity. McNicholas assumed the policy director position in October 2021. She has served as EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel since 2017.

An attorney, McNicholas leads EPI’s legislative efforts on a wide range of workers’ rights issues, including labor law reform, collective bargaining, and union organizing. Her research has informed policymakers, advocates, and journalists on why unions are good for workers, how current labor law fails to protect the right to unionize, and why workers need legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to restore the right to unionize. 

Before joining EPI, McNicholas served as director of congressional and public affairs and as special counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). At the NLRB, she counseled presidential nominees to the board and the general counsel throughout the Senate confirmation process. In addition, McNicholas was responsible for the agency’s congressional affairs work including all agency oversight matters.

From 2009 to 2013, she served as senior labor counsel to Ranking Member George Miller (D-Calif.) for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce. In that role, she advised Rep. Miller on legal issues surrounding the Fair Labor Standards Act, National Labor Relations Act, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Davis– Bacon Act, Service Contract Act, and project labor agreements. Before working for the committee, McNicholas was a legislative staffer for both U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak from Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas from Massachusetts.

Education
J.D., Villanova University School of Law
B.A., Mount Holyoke College

Areas of expertise
Labor and employment law • Collective bargaining • Union organizing • Regulatory policy

Education
B.S., Political Communication, Emerson College

Biography

Daniel Costa is an attorney who first joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2010 and was EPI’s director of immigration law and policy research from 2013 to early 2018; he returned to this role in 2019 after serving as the California Attorney General’s senior advisor on immigration and labor. Costa’s areas of research include a wide range of labor migration issues, including governance of temporary labor migration programs, migration for both professional occupations and lower-wage jobs, worksite enforcement, and immigrant workers’ rights, as well as farm labor, global multilateral processes related to migration, and refugee and asylum issues.

Costa has testified on immigration before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives multiple times, as well as state governments, been quoted and cited by many major news outlets, and appeared on radio and television news. His commentaries have appeared in publications like The New York Times, Roll Call, Fortune, La Opinión, and others, and he was named one of “20 Immigration Experts to Follow on Twitter” by ABC News. While at the California Office of the Attorney General, he worked to defend the state’s sanctuary laws and helped lead the development of model policies and guidance for public institutions for responding to federal immigration enforcement, to better enable staff to protect the rights of immigrants to safely access the state’s courts, schools, worker protection agencies, libraries, and shelters. Costa is currently a visiting scholar at the Global Migration Center at the University of California-Davis, and was previously a visiting scholar at U.C. Davis, School of Law (2019–2020) and an affiliated scholar with the University of California-Merced (2015–2017).

Prior to his tenure at EPI, Costa worked on developing the legal and normative framework for disaster response and humanitarian relief operations with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, Switzerland, and completed the International Law Seminar with the UN International Law Commission. He was also a policy analyst at the Great Valley Center, a former University of California think tank, where he managed an immigrant integration program. He is the proud son of immigrants and fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. 

Education
LL.M., International and Comparative Law, Georgetown University Law Center
J.D., International Law, Syracuse University
B.A., Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley