Lora Jo Foo

Lora Jo Foo is a labor organizer and attorney specializing in labor law, and the author of Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns, and Responsive Human and Civil Rights Advocacy. She is a native of San Francisco, born and raised in the Chinatown community, where she began working as a garment worker in a sweatshop at the age of 11. She went back into a garment factory to work after college, this time as a union organizer. After graduating from law school, she worked for a private labor law firm representing unions.

From 1992 to 2000, she was the employment and labor attorney for the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, California where she represented Asian American immigrant workers in sweatshop industries. She co-founded the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and was its National Chair from 1996 to 1998. She is also a co-founder of the California-based Sweatshop Watch and served as its Board President from 1995 to 2004. She is also a nature photographer, and incorporated her photography work into her book Earth Passages: Journeys Through Childhood.