Connie Derr is executive director of AFSCME Council 18, covering New Mexico and Colorado. She has served in this capacity since 2010. Connie is also the AFSCME International Vice President for the Southwestern Legislative District of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma and Utah. She began her second four-year term as International Vice President in September, 2020.
As Council 18 Executive Director, Derr has made increasing and engaging the membership of AFSCME a top priority of Council 18. She has spearheaded the development of the council’s robust training program, has lead its ACT (AFSCME Community Team) community engagement program, and continually focuses on building a stronger communications and political program, one that engages, highlights and invests the membership.
In 2018, Derr guided the unification of (former) AFSCME Colorado Council 76 into the unified New Mexico, Colorado AFSCME Council 18, and is now on the Colorado AFL-CIO Executive Council.
Derr, who has been with AFSCME for more than three decades, grew up in a union household in El Paso, Texas. Her father was a 50-plus year active member of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, Local 49, and her mother, too, had always been a strong believer in the importance of labor unions for working families and the middle class. And those beliefs and values were strongly instilled in Connie Derr, who carries them out every day.