Ann Toback, CEO

Ann Toback, is the CEO of the Workers Circle. Ann has served in this position since June 2008. A lifelong progressive activist – whose grandparents met at a union hall - and trained attorney, Ann previously served as the Assistant Executive Director at the Writers Guild of America, East from 1999-2008. A highlight of Ann’s union career was successfully directing and organizing the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike on the East Coast before coming to lead the Workers Circle. During Ann’s tenure as the nonprofit’s first woman leader, she has led the organization through a reboot process, resulting in today’s Workers Circle, a social justice organization that powers progressive Jewish identity through Jewish cultural engagement, Yiddish language learning, multigenerational education, and social justice activism.

Under Ann’s leadership, the Workers Circle made the strategic decision to reengage around its progressive roots and launched a new activist agenda prioritizing immigrant rights and economic justice activism. In the past years the Workers Circle has taken lead roles in the Fight for $15 living wage campaign and Green Light NY, which successfully advocated for access to NYS Drivers’ Licenses for undocumented immigrants, and currently against the anti-immigrant federal Public Charge Rule.

Today the Workers Circle is committed to honoring its Yiddish and Bundist roots and has become the largest Yiddish language program in the world, teaching over 1000 students Yiddish language and connecting many more to their Yiddishkayt roots. The organization is organizing and working fiercely in support of fights for the dignity and economic rights of immigrants; worker protections, including the right to unionize and collectively bargain; living wage; and currently the organization is fighting the national rise of Fascism, bigotry, including anti-Semitic acts, systemic racism, and hate crimes.