This Pitt alum got a humanitarian award from Farmworker Justice

Amy Liebman’s roots in America go back three generations to her grandparents, who fled Eastern Europe in 1910 for the promise of a better life abroad. They made shoes, sewed clothes and unloaded trucks, the kind of unglamorous work that made this nation tick.

Their journey inspired Liebman (A&S ’90) to dedicate her career to ensuring the immigrants of today are protected and supported as they do their own unglamorous work on farms and factory floors.

“I'm interested in immigrant and migrant workers and their families and fostering the contributions that they make and their importance to our country,” she says. “We couldn't survive without them.”

Today, Liebman is the chief program officer for workers, environment and climate at the Migrant Clinicians Network (MCN), a global nonprofit that works to achieve equity in the health care system. But her path to the position began when she was a child growing up in northeast Pennsylvania.

Close family friends were living in Chile in 1973 when the country’s then-president, Salvador Allende, was assassinated. It left an impression on a young Liebman, who developed a fascination with Latin and South American culture and politics that eventually led her to Pitt, where she took classes in the renowned Latin American studies program and used a Cathedral of Learning scholarship to improve her language skills in Merida, Mexico.

After earning two graduate degrees from the University of Texas and working with Mexican counterparts along the border in El Paso to develop a community-based education program to prevent disease from contaminated water, Liebman moved to Maryland and began working at MCN with a deep knowledge of migrant and environmental health.

At MCN, she’s able to apply that knowledge to the entire immigrant and migrant workforce in the United States, not just along the border. Over the years, she’s instituted a community health worker model to disseminate and address health concerns, such as pesticide exposure and workplace injuries, and advocated for food worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Liebman has received numerous awards and accolades for her efforts, she says it is her most recent award that means the most. In September, Farmworker Justice presented Liebman with the Shelley Davis Humanitarian Award, named for the late farmworker advocate and activist who once served as Liebman’s mentor.

“For me to get an award in her name is just such an incredible honor,” Liebman says.