Deborah Axt

As of April 1, 2021, Deborah Axt became a former Co-Executive Director of Make the Road New York. She helped build MRNY for over 20 years, including nearly a decade as Co-Executive Director. She also co-led Make the Road Action and, most recently, Make the Road States, which was founded in 2019. Deborah led Make the Road’s low-wage worker organizing and policy work, as well as the organization’s legal department, all other education and survival services, and finance and development operations.

She is one of the architects of the Committee for Better Banks, a national bank worker organization that helped to win abolition of predatory sales goals at Wells Fargo, and the campaign to block Amazon from building its second headquarters in New York City, She led the successful campaign to pass the Wage Theft Prevention Act in New York State; has helped to craft and win passage of numerous other pieces of city and state legislation; and is considered to be one of the nation’s leading experts on community-based worker organizing, wage theft, and workers’ rights enforcement. Deborah first joined Make the Road as a summer legal intern in 2000, then graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and joined the staff full-time in 2002.

She built the organization’s legal department before becoming Co-Executive Director in 2012. Before law school, Deborah worked as a union and community organizer, serving on the leadership teams of industry-wide initiatives in West Palm Beach, Florida; Los Angeles, California; and New Orleans, Louisiana. She teaches the Law, Organizing, and Social Change Clinic at the New York University law school. She is the mom of Elijah and Zoe.