Lesley Hirsch

Lesley Hirsch is the Assistant Commissioner of Research and Information at the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Her vision for the department is to bring cutting-edge digital tools to bear to deliver labor market intelligence to the department’s internal and external customers where, when, and how they need it and to mine every data source so it can tell its full story. Her 25- year career has been dedicated to using research to inform policies and programs, with an emphasis on improving the lives of low-income people nationwide. Ms. Hirsch is a recognized innovator in making research accessible and action-oriented. Prior to coming to NJDOL, she was the founding director of the NYC Labor Market Information Service at the CUNY Graduate Center, which provided research and consulting to policy makers and providers in the region’s workforce development system. She served as research director at the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, a public interest law and advocacy firm that successfully sued the State of New Jersey for equitable school finance on behalf of 300,000 of New Jersey State’s poorest schoolchildren. She is a graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University and has completed all but the dissertation in political science/public policy at the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught political science at the City College of New York.