UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Roxanne Brown, international vice president at large for the United Steelworkers (USW), will deliver the 2025 Philip Murray Memorial Labor Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 27 in 112 Kern Building on Penn State’s University Park campus. The event is free and open to the public.
In her current role with USW, Brown oversees the union’s public policy and legislative agenda as well as its political work. She has spent more than two decades advancing policies on Capitol Hill and with regulatory agencies on behalf of USW members; she also has extensive experience in manufacturing, environmental and energy policy.
Brown also serves as a vice president on the AFL-CIO Executive Council and was a founding steering committee member of the BlueGreen Alliance. She is a member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and serves on the boards of the Center for Community Change, the League of Conservation Voters and the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2023, TIME magazine recognized Brown as one of the 100 most innovative leaders driving climate action.
The Philip Murray Memorial Labor Lecture is a lecture sponsored by the Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations and the USW that brings a distinguished representative of the labor movement to Penn State each year. Now in its thirtieth year, the lecture promotes the exchange of ideas between the University community–students, faculty, and staff—and leadership in the labor movement. The goal of this interchange is to contribute to a better understanding of the important role the labor movement has played, and continues to play, in a democratic society.
The lecture honors the memory of Philip Murray (1886-1952), first president of the United Steelworkers of America and second president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.