Katherine Williams Dodd, 29, of Napa, has just been appointed by Governor Brown to the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.

Dodd has served as deputy legal affairs secretary in the Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. since 2017. She was assistant general manager and corporate secretary at Frog’s Leap Winery from 2016 to 2017.

Dodd was a legislative advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union of California Center for Advocacy and Policy from 2013 to 2016, where she was a legislative assistant from 2010 to 2013.

She earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. She has been admitted to the California State Bar as an attorney since May 27, 2015, slightly more than three years ago.

Dodd is president of the Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center Board of Directors.

She has no apparent experience in the practice of Workers’ Compensation law, or claims administration. This is the second WCAB appointment by Governor Brown this year of a candidate with virtually no experience in the field.

Earlier this month he appointed Juan Pedro Gaffney, 80, of Sebastopol to the California Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board.

Gaffney has been a member of the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Appeals Board since 2017 and director at Coro Hispano de San Francisco since 1975.

He was director of Hispanic liturgy at Mission Dolores from 1993 to 2008 and was the first artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Gaffney was an associate professor of philosophy at St. Joseph’s College and a lecturer at Saint Mary’s College from 1972 to 1996.

Gaffney is a vice president of the Instituto Pro Música de California. He has been researching, editing, teaching and performing the choral music of Latin America, Spain and Portugal for the past 35 years.

In 1975 he founded the Coro Hispano de San Francisco and Conjunto Nuevo Mundo, and conjointly, the Instituto Pro Música’s Musicological Research Program, through which he has transcribed and/or edited more than 100 works by New World Renaissance and Baroque masters.

Maestro Gaffney also serves as Director of Hispanic Liturgy at the Basilica of Mission San Francisco de Asís.

He also does not have any background in workers’ compensation.

This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $153,689. Dodd is a Democrat, and is Sen. Bill Dodd’s daughter in law. Gaffney is reportedly Brown’s high school classmate.