Misty Rebik

Misty Rebik is the Executive Director for the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa (CWJ). The CWJ was formally founded in November of 2012, and Misty was elected to its first Board of Directors. In July 2013, Misty was delighted to become the Center’s first hired staff and executive director. With the Center she is dedicated to the empowerment of immigrant workers to know and defend their rights and to build common cause across linguistic, religious, racial, national/political barriers to work towards concrete change. To date, CWJ has recovered thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, mobilized more than 500 people in the local community to take action, and educated more than 500 low wage workers about their rights. Misty was formerly a community organizer with the grass-roots organizing group, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI), where she worked on the group’s Latino Organizing Project. While at Iowa CCI Misty worked with dozens of low-wage Latino workers to recover tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, worked to strengthen wage theft enforcement in the state of Iowa, and to hold corporations accountable to fair treatment of workers. She also has served as an AmeriCorps Volunteer for the Iowa Immigration Education Coalition, and Iowa Legal Aid. Misty is passionate about all things social justice, and an enthusiastic traveler. She speaks Spanish, is practicing Portuguese, and soon wishes to learn Arabic.

Misty has won several awards including the Iowa City Human Rights Commission Kenneth Cmiel for outstanding contributions to human rights by actively participating in the field, and the Jim Harris Award for commitment to volunteer social justice work. Misty holds a B.A. in International Studies emphasizing on Latin American Studies with a Spanish Minor from the University of Iowa and an M.S in Urban & Regional Planning from the University of Iowa.