Meet Our Officers

Susan DeCarava | President

Bill Baker | Treasurer

     Bill Baker has been a union member for the majority of his nearly 40-year career. Like many who would become future activists, he learned to appreciate the value of being a union member when he won an arbitration against an employer for wrongful termination. Fast forward to 2013, he was elected unit secretary for the New York Times Guild, where h began his foray into leadership. He then was elected as Times Guild Unit Chair in 2016, and served as a member of the TNG International Executive Board as the Region V Vice President since 2019. Throughout this period he served on the Executive Committee of our union, grateful for the amazing opportunity to work alongside some awesome union activists and accomplish great things!

     Bill chaired the Times Guild unit through two contracts, with the most recent one being the best we have negotiated in decades. Today the unit is stronger than it has ever been with members who are more active and engaged, with an increased social media presence and robust internal communications. Our stewards network is strong and still growing stronger. Our contract action team, which started taking shape in 2020, has grown to over 100 members! On the Local level Bill works with members of our Executive Committee, making himself available to sibling units when called upon. As a member of the EC, he supported increasing our membership numbers while improving our budget and amending our Local bylaws. 

     Similarly, as the Region V Vice President and member of the Executive Council, Bill served on the committee to amend the TNG Constitution in 2023. He participated in the 'Save Local News' campaign which was formed to push legislation that would stop the proliferation of the closing of newsrooms across the nation, to not only save journalism jobs but increase pay and benefits. He continues to work alongside TNG President Jon Schleuss and Executive Vice President Marian Needham to bring the TNG budget into positive territory while growing our union. As one of the longest tenured members of the executive board he has attended multiple Sector Conferences and CWA Conventions, representing our members and ensuring their voices are heard.  

     Outside of our union, Bill continues to serve in many other capacities. He is a Youth Leader and Director of a mentoring program and officer at his church, which is one of the largest on the east coast. He is also on the board of directors for a credit union. He has been married for 26 years, with 5 children and 5 grandchildren.

     Bill's stated goal as Treasurer is to use his experiences and understanding of the broader labor movement to continue to grow our union. He looks forward to applying the leadership skills gained over many years to more of our members and use the opportunity to work as hard as he possibly can to continue to move our union forward.

Kathy Zhang | Secretary

     The very first union organizing meeting Kathy Zhang attended was in December 2018. Six years and eight days later, the Times Tech Guild ratified their very first contract — winning just cause, protections for workers on visas, on-call compensation, and a robust contract framework to build upon in future bargaining. She was proud to serve as Unit Chair while hundreds of members took to the streets during the Times Tech election week strike, demonstrating what true democracy looks like as bosses gazed down at workers from their glass tower. The Times Tech unit would never have been able to pull off such successful organizing and contract campaigns without strong leaders setting and executing a broad organizing vision within our Local. Kathy is in awe of the next round of leaders who will lead our unit through the next chapter and is eager to invest more of her organizing energy at the Local level and beyond. She am proud to organize with courageous union leaders amidst a violently anti-labor political environment that seeks to destroy worker solidarity and labor power. Now is a time for all of us to move Guild Forward for democracy! As Grace Lee Boggs reminds us, “If we want to see change in our lives, we have to change things ourselves.”

Jody Godoy | Local Chair

     Jody Godoy is Reuters’ tech policy and antitrust correspondent based in New York. Her Guild journey began at Law360 which unionized with our union in 2016. She served on the Law360 bargaining committee and helped secure the unit’s first contract in 2019

     Since then, Jody has served in various leadership roles at the Guild, including her first term as Local Chair in 2022 and a shop steward at Reuters. As the Guild’s Local Chair, she hopes to promote transparency, good governance and member-driven initiatives to address shared issues and goals across units, believing wholeheartedly that together is how we move our union forward.

Alma Avalle | First Vice President

     Alma Avalle is a writer and web producer at Bon Appétit, where she writes about cooking and labor (when she gets the chance). Alma is member-at-large of the Condé Nast Union and co-led their bargaining table through the union’s first contract negotiations in 2024. She is a member of the Trans Journalists Association and co-editor of the independent Picnic Magazine.

Theresa Schliep | Second Vice President

     Theresa Schliep a senior reporter at Law360, where she's worked for six years and written on a variety of subjects, including healthcare policy, fashion law, and intellectual property litigation. Since joining our union in 2019, she has been a member of the Law360 unit council, served as secretary and vice chair, and participated in contract negotiations on the bargaining committee. With her coworkers, Theresa led her unit in securing an amazing contract that codified life-changing salary increases and bonuses for members, thwarted management's efforts to hike healthcare costs and decrease quality of care, and more than doubled a paltry six weeks of parental leave to 14 weeks. At the Local level, she has been a member organizer and participant on the Guild-wide organizing committee. Theresa very earnestly believe that we can fight for an industry that’s not hostile to our basic needs, and that lets us flourish as workers who bring truth to power. She is committed to making the lives of journalists better, and for a union that will not stop fighting for what media workers deserve.