Category: Guest Speaker – Regulation

 

Mrs. Shequeila Birdsong and Mrs. Amber O’Dierno of the US Department of Labor spoke to Alfred University students about Wage and Hour legal issues. They gave many interesting examples of industries that are investigated for non-compliance with federal minimum wage requirements.

Mrs. Birdsong is the Community Outreach and Planning Specialist for the Federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.  She began her federal service with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) where she spent a decade working in various positions.  Her final position at the IRS was as a Taxpayer Advocate.

Ms. O’Dierno is an investigator with the United States Department of Labor’s Wage & Hour Division. She was hired as an investigator in January of 2015. She investigates employers to ensure they are in compliance with federal labor laws including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Service Contract Act (SCA), Davis Bacon and Related Contract Acts (DBRA), Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA), and temporary worker programs  (H-2A, H-2B, H-1B). Prior to coming to work for the U.S. Department of Labor, she worked as an investigator at the New York State Department of Labor ‘s Division of Labor Standards, and the Internal Revenue Service. She has a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice.

Mr. Craig Gestring is a career prosecutor. He has prosecuted criminal cases in State, Federal, and Military courts around the country. Gestring is an Assistant United States Attorney with the Criminal Division in the Western District of New York where he prosecutes a wide variety of federal crimes including environmental crimes, white collar crimes, frauds, threat cases, and gun crimes. Gestring’s cyber work includes prosecuting online crimes against children and coordinating cyber investigations involving BOTs, intrusions, and hacking.

Gestring is a combat veteran, having spent a long, hot, and dusty year doing Army stuff with an M-16 in the Al Anbar Province of Western Iraq.

 

Mrs. Shequeila Birdsong and Ms. Amber O’Dierno of the US Department of Labor spoke to Alfred University students today about Wage and Hour legal issues. They gave many interesting examples of industries that were being investigated for non-compliance with federal minimum wage requirements.

Mrs. Birdsong is the Community Outreach and Planning Specialist for the Federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.  She began her federal service with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) where she spent a decade working in various positions.  Her final position at the IRS was as a Taxpayer Advocate.

 

Paul Simon is the Deputy Regional Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 2. In that capacity, he works closely with the Regional Counsel in the management and direction of the Office of Regional Counsel (ORC), an office of approximately 80 lawyers who provide legal support for Region 2’s implementation and enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, the federal Superfund law, and a number of other federal environmental statutes. Paul helps to set priorities, strategies and goals for the office and provides guidance to and oversight of the office’s work units.

In 2011-2012, Paul did a stint as EPA Region 2’s senior policy advisor on climate change issues. In 2009, he served on a 4-month detail in EPA Headquarters as the Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water.

Before becoming Deputy Regional Counsel in 2005, Paul was the Chief of ORC’s New York/Caribbean Superfund Branch, and as such, managed that branch’s judicial and administrative enforcement efforts concerning hundreds of Superfund sites in New York, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Paul joined EPA in 1985 as a staff attorney, and became a first-line supervisor in 1989. Before coming to EPA, Paul was a litigation attorney with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources.

Paul earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his B.A. from Harvard University.

 

Carol Kando-Pineda is Counsel in the FTC’s Division of Consumer and Business Education where she leads teams to create free print materials, websites, and videos to help people avoid scams, manage their money and make wise buys. Carol began her FTC career as a staff attorney bringing false advertising cases; she then became the agency’s Legislative Counsel, serving for several years as a liaison between the FTC and Congress.

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