Tefere Gebre

Tefere Gebre is an Ethiopian-American labor and human rights activist, and the chief program officer of Greenpeace USA. From 2013 until 2022, he was the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO.

Early life When he was 14 years old, Gebre fled Ethiopia, walking for weeks to Sudan. He lived in a refugee camp in Sudan until he was 15, when he was granted political refuge status and arrived in Los Angeles alone.

Gebre graduated in 1987 from Belmont High School in downtown Los Angeles. He attended Cal Poly Pomona on a track and field scholarship, where he won the 1989 Drake Relays college 4 × 800 m relay as a middle-distance runner. He later graduated from the college with a bachelor's degree in International Marketing. While in college, he worked his first union job as a night shift loader at UPS and a member of Teamsters Local 396. He credits his union job for making it possible for him to afford to attend college.

Career Early in his career, Gebre worked for then-Speaker of the California State Assembly, Willie L. Brown Jr., as a legislative aid and was twice elected as president of the California Young Democrats. He was the first Black-American and first immigrant elected to lead the California Young Democrats.

As part of an effort to defeat California Proposition 32 on the 2012 ballot, Gebre led the Orange County federation through an extensive voter outreach and education effort that was credited as playing a critical role in the defeat of the initiative.

In an interview with Huffington Post, Gebre said, "I have personally never seen a labor meeting more open and ready to bring in more people – a labor movement that is now willing to speak up for the people who sweat behind the counters and in the kitchens of McDonald's, the cab drivers, the domestic workers, and the day laborers." The New York Times said his appointment signals “the growing importance of ties between labor and environmental organizers on climate change.”