Jessica Maher is the Executive Director of SAG-AFTRA’s New England Local chapter, which represents members in Eastern Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Ms. Maher began her career at SAG-AFTRA as a Contracts Administrator and has since worked her way through the organization. She began her current position as Executive Director in 2021 and helped to lead the chapter through last summer’s labor strikes.
This month, Jessica Maher sat down with JSEL’s Alec Winshel to discuss her career within SAG-AFTRA’s New England Local chapter and to share advice for law students planning their careers in the entertainment industry.
Alec Winshel:
You are the Executive Director of SAG-AFTRA’s New England Local chapter. Can you tell us a bit about your responsibilities in that role?
Jessica Maher:
Sure. As the Executive Director, I am the staff person that oversees the Local. I’m not a member. I’m not an actor. I’m there to handle any kind of administrative tasks for the Local. I’m the liaison for the Board, so I work with them a lot: we have board meetings and—whatever their initiatives are—I’m there to guide them and make sure that they get what they need to function. I oversee our staff and work as the liaison between the Local and the National Offices.
Winshel:
It seems like you’re at the center of a lot of dynamics. There’s the Board, there’s the staff members, then there are the members of the union who themselves have varied interests and careers. How do you manage all those different interests?
Maher:
That’s a good question. I think, at the end of the day, everyone’s interest is the same. We want to better member’s lives. We want to better SAG-AFTRA to make it stronger. We want people to be fairly compensated and treated appropriately in their jobs. So, if we’re thinking about the core of what we do every day, then we’re all headed in the same direction. But it can be a lot of changing hats and managing various roles within the union.
Winshel:
You’re coming off the heels of a particularly exciting, and I’m sure very stressful, time with the strikes. Can you talk about what that process was like and how it might have changed your organization?
Maher:
This was the biggest strike we’ve had since 2000. I was not on staff at that time. It was a very quick learning curve for all of us to make sure that we were ready to go on day one. With the writers’ strike happening before us, there was a little bit of anticipation of what was going to happen. We had internal discussions: If this happens, what do we need to be ready for? What do we need on day one? That was determining which members within our Local would be good leaders and good communicators, and to get the word out if we needed to have any kind of rallies or picketing. We didn’t know what was going to happen once—or if—the strike authorization came through and then, if the National Board decided to go on strike, what our roles were going to be. It was very quick. It was a lot of moving parts. We take our direction from the National Office, so making sure that we are learning about all the things we need to do, that we’re in step with what their guidelines are, and that we’re obviously not breaking the law. There’s a lot of things that come into play when there’s a strike. All of that was certainly on our minds right away. Also, helping our members and having them understand what was happening: what we could do in New England. There were a lot of things that we couldn’t do in New England that were happening in New York and Los Angeles. And, lots of education and then just helping them with resources. People aren’t working, so you want to make sure that they have access to various foundations that they can reach out to, in order to help them get through a really difficult economic time.
Winshel:
You talked about finding leaders that can take a more active role during the strike and getting resources to all the members. How do you identify people to put in different positions? How do you create that structure?
Maher:
It helps that we do a lot of events locally. We have a great Local board: they know their members and, as staff, we know our members pretty well. You’re able to, over time, go: “Oh, this person had great ideas at this committee meeting.” Or, “Wow, they were really passionate about this project they worked on.”. You’re thinking about that over time. We did spend a few weeks cultivating that list, but then once we had an initial idea, people started talking to each other and would suggest, “Oh, so-and-so would be really great. They are good at social media, so let’s bring them in.” It worked out organically and we were really lucky to have that. You want people that are passionate about their union, but also passionate about the strike and supportive. We were really lucky. We had new members that we had only worked with a couple of times that came forward and were really, really great strike captains: people that attended every event. I think the best thing that came out of the strike was that it developed some great new member leaders.
Winshel:
You talked about taking direction from the National Board. Can you share a little bit more about how the New England chapter fits within the larger national structure of such a huge union and the way that you interact with other local chapters?
Maher:
SAG-AFTRA is governed by its National Board. We have a president and Executive Vice Presidents, as well. The National Board makes decisions for the union. And then we have—outside of Los Angeles and New York—23 other Locals across the country, and each of those Locals have their own boards. Those boards can operate within each Local. The National Board is the governing body and manages everything from the budget to initiatives and, obviously, approves things like strikes.
Winshel:
I want to talk about you and your journey. I know you’ve had a lot of different roles during your time with SAG-AFTRA. Can you talk about your journey within the organization over time?
Maher:
I’ve been here a while and I’d had basically every job in the Local over my career. I went to Northeastern University. I studied music business. There was a time that I really thought that I wanted to be an entertainment attorney, and that I was going to go to law school. One of my co-ops was with an entertainment attorney: her name is Sally Gaglini and she’s still a practicing attorney in Boston, a great attorney. After I was done working with Sally, I was looking for my next co-op and she said I would enjoy working with AFTRA-SAG. At the time, the unions were not joined. They were not merged, so it was an AFTRA office and we administered SAG contracts because at the time the unions were separate. We merged in 2012. I became an intern at AFTRA-SAG and that was my junior year of Northeastern. I really liked it. I really liked the mixture of contracts and entertainment. I realized I could do this work, but I didn’t have to go to law school. I was hired in my senior year. I worked part time and kind of worked my way up. I worked on contracts and then I left in 1998. I wanted to see what it was like on the other side as in to work for an employer. I worked for WGBH for a few years. I worked for NOVA, and was their unit manager and again worked with contracts. I worked with narrator agreements and rights renewals. All the stuff that’s on the back end of producing remarkable content. NOVA is top tier. So, to have that experience and see it from the producer side, and then I left when my oldest son was born: I left and was a stay-at-home mom for a while. I have three boys. As they were getting back into school and starting preschool, it was time for me to go back and see what I can do. Over the years, the previous Executive Director at the New England Local would call me sometimes and ask for me to help. It just never was the right time. And, then it was the right time. I came back. I worked part time just to get my foot back in the door. That was 2008, and since then I’ve just kind of worked my way up. Unfortunately, in 2020, we had some layoffs and staff reductions and at that point, I was named Interim Executive Director and then Executive Director in 2021. I have done everything from membership to entering data and, even for a time, did some broadcast stuff. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good sense of what happens in the Local, and I’ve been here a while so I have a pretty good history, too.
Winshel:
It’s a pretty incredible journey to be there early in your career, to leave to start a family, and to come back and to work your way up. What do you think the benefits are of being with an organization for a long time and seeing each part of how it operates?
Maher:
For me, it’s the historical aspect. I’ve been here a long time. These contracts get renegotiated every three years and often you need to have the history to be able to reflect on what was happening at the time. You have to kind of remember based on that data. I think the most important thing is the member relationships and knowing this membership really, really well. There’s something about working in a union where you build on these relationships with people over time: with member leaders who are often in their leadership positions for quite a few years. It just becomes a sort of symbiotic kind of relationship. My husband works in the computer field and it’s very typical to be at some place for two years, and then it’s time to go. It’s partially my personality, but it’s also that I appreciate the job. It gives me what I like. It’s a great balance between the law and entertainment.
Winshel:
What role has mentorship played in your career?
Maher:
I’ve had some really amazing mentors, and the previous Executive Director of the Local—her name is Dona Sommers. She was the previous Executive Director for 30 years. She was such a great mentor. She taught me so many things. She taught me how to be a better communicator, be a better listener. She taught me how to balance work and life, and she still is a great mentor to this day. She’s really fabulous. Mentorship can go up and down: it’s great to have somebody who’s been there a long time and can give you their history. But, I’ve also learned so much from the people that I work with every day. My staff teaches me so much. I think it’s important as a leader to realize, for example, “I’m not super great in this area. I need somebody who can teach me that.” Our Senior Business Representative, Ben Shallop, has a long history in various other unions. He has been on strike before and he has walked picket lines before. When we went on strike, he was such a huge resource for me and I truly believe he became a mentor to me and taught me a lot of things that I’ve never done before.
Winshel:
What advice do you have for people who are beginning their career in your field?
Maher:
You have to be a really, really good listener. You have to be organized and you have to ask questions. If you have a good mixture of those three things, you can get pretty far. Take good notes! There’s so much that we have to keep track of here. It can sometimes be a big shock to people coming into a new job where you need to keep track of all of your phone calls and all of your emails, and you can’t be deleting stuff off of your computer. There will be a time when somebody calls and says, “Do you have this thing from this movie that shot here ten years ago?” And, seeing the big picture of how all of that works together in order to service our members better. So, listening, organizing, and asking good questions. Those are key to a lot of life, I think.
Winshel:
Thank you for speaking with me. It’s an exciting time. It feels like a lot of people who are learning about SAG-AFTRA and are interested in joining.
Maher:
It really is. I see it more and more. People feel really strongly, particularly now, about protecting their union and standing up for their union. You see a lot of people for whom this is their life and career—they want to see it through the long haul.
It’s such a cool, cool job. I have really good stories and this job is not the same every day. There’s always something new every single day and that’s what makes it interesting.
This interview has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
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