Breanna Betts is a labor policy and research consultant and former policy analyst at the Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP). There, she led the policy and research portfolio for H-CAP's Center for Equity initiative, a national workforce policy hub focused on advancing racial equity and job quality and expanding access to good, union jobs in the occupationally-segregated caregiving industry. Breanna specializes in applying intentional anti-racist frameworks and equitable research methods to her work on job quality, centering workers as experts by lived experience in policy solutions using participatory research methods.
Prior to serving at H-CAP, Breanna gained extensive labor policy experience through her work at Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Locals in California. As a policy analyst at SEIU Local 2015, California’s largest union, her work advanced job quality for California caregivers through policy analysis and advocacy for the union’s legislative priorities, strategic research for bargaining campaigns and collaborative policy development in stakeholder coalitions. Her union policy work inspired her to pursue her master’s degree in public administration (MPA), with a specialization in Public Finance, to study how government systems can better serve working families. After graduating from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy with her MPA in 2020, Breanna served as a senior researcher at SEIU Local 721 in the union’s Social Services division, where she researched and analyzed policies to build public sector worker power in Los Angeles County.
Breanna got her start in the labor movement as an undergraduate student organizer campaigning with campus facilities workers at the University of Southern California, where she earned her B.A. in American Studies & Ethnicity, with a minor in Gender Studies.