Jeff Cohen serves as the System Vice President for Labor Relations and Human Resources for The Mount Sinai Health System in New York. He oversees the policies of one of New York City’s largest healthcare institutions, with more than 40,000 employees, encompassing the Icahn School of Medicine and eight campuses. Mr. Cohen has dedicated his life to advocating for workers’ rights.

For the past 40 years, Mr. Cohen has been involved with organized labor from all sides, as a rank and file member, a delegate, an 1199SEIU organizer in New York and nationally, and in Hospital Administration.

Mr. Cohen was an organizer from 1984 to 1995, and was responsible for uniting unorganized workers and negotiating the first contracts throughout the five boroughs and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. He then progressed to working for the 1199SEIU national Union, servicing New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan and Florida. After a number of years as an Organizer, Mr. Cohen realized his skills and insight could effect change in management. That led him to take a position at NYC Health + Hospitals’ Goldwater Coler Specialty Hospital as the Director of Labor Relations and later, as a Senior Management Consultant.

After decades of life-changing work, Mr. Cohen became the Director of Labor Relations at The Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. The lessons he’s learned from his work in the union movement and from the residents at Goldwater Coler have enabled him to continue helping working people do their jobs with respect and dignity. According to Mr. Cohen, “We will either be successful together or will fail separately.”

Mr. Cohen has been married to his wife, Leslie for 40 years and has two children, Jana and Jared, who are both New York City teachers, and two grandchildren, Dylan and Macie.