Maria T. Perry is an attorney with experience handling a wide range of legal matters.  She particularly enjoys working on civil rights and constitutional law cases. She was one of the attorneys who represented arrested protestors in connection with NC’s first Moral Monday protests of 2013. For over a decade, Maria has also vetted several legal cases for amicus assistance on appeal, and has authored or co-authored briefs in support of various civil and constitutional rights issues. Maria has served as a board member and committee member for multiple organizations in the past, and has a passion for advocating for justice. Having been born to parents who were low wage earners, one of whom picked cotton and harvested tobacco in the 1960s, Maria is particularly passionate about labor rights. She is the author of the soon to be published narrative, “A Luta Continua: The Larry Little Story and the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party,” which chronicles the life of the leader of the first Southern chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Melanie Stratton Lopez is a Senior Attorney for Strategic Enforcement at the Workplace Justice Lab at Northwestern University, where she advises state and local governments on labor law implementation, contributes to national coalitions shaping federal labor enforcement policy, and conducts academic research on workers’ rights. Previously, she served as a Senior Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Labor, where she led enforcement litigation under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and whistleblower provisions of various federal statutes. Her work included securing an eight-figure settlement in a corporate-wide agreement against a major retailer, developing novel enforcement strategies to address workplace hazards like heat illness, and providing strategic counsel in investigations of systemic labor abuses, such as securing back wages for Black farmworkers in the Mississippi Delta. She was the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg Law’s Fifth Edition of the Occupational Safety and Health Law Treatise and is a frequent speaker on labor and employment law issues. Melanie is admitted to the North Carolina bar and received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of North Carolina. Melanie attributes her career as an employment attorney advocating for low-wage workers to her grandparents—who were migrant farmworkers from South Texas—and to her bicultural upbringing in Texas and rural North Carolina.

Lekha Shupeck is the Institute for Southern Studies’ director of programs, working in collaboration with the executive director to oversee the Institute’s media, research, and outreach initiatives, as well as assist with foundation and institutional fundraising. Prior to joining the Institute, Lekha was state outreach director for Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism organization. She was previously North Carolina Director of All on the Line, a group promoting redistricting reform, and statewide campaigns manager for the ACLU of North Carolina. She holds a Ph.D. in history from UNC-Chapel Hill and a J.D. from Duke University School of Law.

Ben Wilkins is the director of the Union of Southern Service Workers, a cross-sector union of service workers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. He has been an organizer in racial justice and labor struggles for over 20 years across the south and midwest. As an organizer with a healthcare workers union local in Michigan, he led campaigns among hospital and nursing home workers. He was also a key part of the Fight for $15 movement, organizing low wage workers across the U.S. South from his home base in North Carolina. He is the editor of Anne Braden Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1947-1999.