NEW YORK, NY – The New York City District Council of Carpenters (NYCDCC) today named Yovan S. Collado, Esq., its Political Director. Collado will lead the union’s political, legislative and electoral strategy on behalf of union carpenters and their families across New York City.
In this role, Collado will make sure the voices of union carpenters are heard by the officials making decisions about New York’s future. Those decisions shape what gets built in the city and whether the people building it earn good wages and benefits. Union carpentry remains one of the most reliable pathways into the middle class, and the District Council’s political work is about protecting that pathway and opening it to more New Yorkers.
“Yovan understands that every policy fight is ultimately a fight for jobs and for the families who depend on them,” said Paul Capurso, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of NYCDCC. “New Yorkers are about to elect leaders who will help decide how some of the biggest projects in our city move forward. We need someone who can connect those decisions to careers for our members, and Yovan has spent his career doing exactly that. He knows how to build the relationships that turn political wins into work on the jobsite.”
Collado joins NYCDCC from the Carpenter Contractor Alliance of Metropolitan New York, where as Director of Community Relations he built partnerships between labor and the construction industry and expanded access to union apprenticeships. Before that, he helped lead a housing advocacy nonprofit, spearheading investigations into housing discrimination and fraud and working with public officials on policy to protect tenants.
“As a kid from the Bronx, I saw firsthand what a union career could mean for a family. My mother was a union seamstress with the ILGWU, and I watched my city get built by people like her—working people whose labor gave their families a path to a better life,” said Collado. “My job is to make sure the people shaping New York’s future understand what’s at stake for working families, and that the jobs that come from their decisions go to the New Yorkers who need them.”
Yovan earned his Juris Doctor from the City University of New York School of Law and his bachelor’s degree in political science from CUNY’s Lehman College. He is admitted to practice law in the State of New York. In 2023, City & State named him to its Albany 40 Under 40 list in recognition of his work in government, advocacy, and organized labor.
A lifelong New Yorker and proud Bronxite, Collado has built his career on the belief that working people deserve a meaningful voice in their government.