Janet Herold

Legal Director, Justice Catalyst Law

Janet Herold is the Legal Director of Justice Catalyst Law. Prior to joining Justice Catalyst Law, she served as the Department of Labor’s Regional Solicitor for the Western Region, leading creative and groundbreaking litigation addressing a wide array of worker exploitation, including employment discrimination, wage theft, retaliation, and misuse and waste of employee pensions and health funds. Notably, she brought the largest pay discrimination case ever filed by the federal government, anchored and led the DOL’s efforts to redress employee misclassification as independent contractors, and pioneered the use of the early injunction to protect vulnerable and immigrant workers from retaliation and threats of immediate physical harm.

Prior to becoming Regional Solicitor, Ms. Herold was Associate General Counsel for the Service Employees International Union, leading the National Wage and Hour Project and serving as litigation counsel to classes of immigrant or vulnerable workers, including developing and bringing groundbreaking litigation securing immediate injunctive relief for misclassified warehouses workers moving goods for Walmart. Both before and while at SEIU, Ms. Herold also maintained a private practice, leading creative class action litigation representing workers seeking redress for severe workplace exploitation, trafficking, and myriad forms of wage theft, including successfully securing utilizing California’s taxpayer redress statute to secure redress for a statewide class of incarcerated workers. Ms. Herold is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Notre Dame with degrees in Mathematics and English.