Francisco Maldonado-Ramírez, Esq., is the Senior Counsel for Policy and External Affairs at the New Jersey Laborers’ Employers’ Cooperative Education Trust (New Jersey LECET), where he works to create economic opportunities for workers by developing legislative policy initiatives and advocates on labor policy issues. He is a Commissioner of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, and he also serves on the New Jersey Puerto Rico Commission. In 2025, he was elected to the Highland Park Board of Education.

Francisco has served on two New Jersey gubernatorial transitions. In 2025, he served as the Director of Transition Policy Planning for Governor Mikie Sherrill’s Transition team, where he focused on the development and planning for the implementation of Gov. Sherrill’s policy plan for her first 100 days in office. In 2017, he served on Governor Phil Murphy’s Transition Committee, co-authoring the Committee’s report on Labor and Workforce Development.

Francisco is a graduate of Yale University and of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. After law school, he clerked for the late federal judge Jaime Pieras, Jr., in the District of Puerto Rico, and practiced voting rights law in Washington, D.C. He moved to New Jersey in 2009, where he joined Governor Jon Corzine’s re-election campaign as Deputy Policy Director. He then spent a decade working in a variety of roles in both houses of New Jersey’s state legislature, where he spearheaded major legislative initiatives including increasing the minimum wage, earned sick leave, improving the state’s paid family leave program, reforming New Jersey’s cash bail system, overhauling the state’s solar energy incentive structure, and redesigning the state’s economic development tax incentive programs.

Francisco hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he also advocates for fair wages, safe working conditions, and union representation for construction workers on behalf of LIUNA.