Jennifer S. Higgins has been an active participant in MSUFT Local 1904 since 2006. She began her service as a member of the Professional Staff Negotiating Team and an Alternate Delegate to the College Council. In May 2008, she was first elected as an officer to the Local and subsequently held the positions of Associate Vice President for Personnel, Vice President for Internal Affairs, Acting President, Professional Staff Negotiations Coordinator, and most recently was the Vice President for External Affairs.

Higgins has also served as the Professional Staff Representative to the Council of New Jersey State College Locals. In this role, she played a critical part in statewide negotiations of the statewide agreements that were settled in 2012 and 2016.

In 2016, Higgins became a Vice President of the Higher Education Division of American Federation of Teachers New Jersey (AFTNJ). On April 14, 2018, she was elected as treasurer of AFTNJ for her first term in this position and was re-elected on May 18, 2020.

Additionally, she has served on AFT’s national Women’s Rights Committee since 2016.

Higgins has also been a speaker at both the NJ AFL-CIO’s Women in Leadership Development (W.I.L.D.) Conference and the NJ AFL-CIO’s C.O.P.E. Convention, and a member of the NJ AFL-CIO’s Young Workers Group. She also participated in the AFL-CIO’s Common Sense Economics train-the-trainer workshop in 2015 and its Mid-Atlantic Labor Leadership Initiative training in 2017.

In addition, she has served as a delegate to the Essex-West Hudson Central Labor Council and is a former trustee of the Northwest Jersey Central Labor Council.

Higgins became active in the labor movement because she saw the opportunity to make a difference in her workplace. Something you may not know about her is that she is not from New Jersey but is from Connecticut. Despite her reserved New Englander exterior, she is really a Jersey girl at heart because she never backs down from a fight for fairness and equality.