Sean McGarvey is President of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU), an alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry that collectively represent over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada. Sean is a respected union construction expert among labor, government, corporate, and private sector leaders. His strategic vision and focus to give the livelihoods and career opportunities of rank and file members primacy have strengthened NABTU’s impact and value to owners, contractors and whole communities.

A graduate and proponent of construction registered apprenticeship, Sean has led the development of Apprenticeship Readiness Programs, which focus on recruiting communities of color, women and veterans into the building trades. He champions for the expansion of and more investment in the Registered Apprenticeship model for trade workforce advancement. He established Capital Strategies, a program to advance high-road standards in procurement practices and grow partnerships with top Wall Street and Bay Street investment firms supporting job-creating enterprises in commercial, industrial and residential construction. His bipartisan approach to policy and politics have navigated the building trades through some of the toughest fights to protect and advance labor, training, and industry standards, lower barriers to entry for new energy infrastructure and promote investment in rebuilding public infrastructure.

Sean serves on a number of national and international workforce boards, including the Presidential Taskforce on Apprenticeship, the National Workforce Policy Advisory Board, and Council on Competitiveness. He sits on energy industry labor committees for American Petroleum Institute, American Chemical Council, Nuclear Energy Institute, Southern Company Power and Gas, among others. He chairs the boards of Helmets to Hardhats, CPWR’s Center for Construction Research and Training, the National Coordinating Committee for Multi-Employer Plans (NCCMP) and Diabetes Research Institute. Sean has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and is a graduate of Harvard University’s Trade Union Program.

McGarvey is fourth-generation Irish American — on his mother’s side his great-grandmother is from County Derry and his great-grandfather is from County Tyrone.

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Click here to read McGarvey’s March / April 2020 Hall of Fame profile.