Duncan Crabtree-Ireland
SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator
About Speaker
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland is the National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator of SAG-AFTRA. In this capacity, he oversees the world’s largest and most influential entertainment union, comprised of more than 160,000 members worldwide who work in film, television, broadcast news, commercials, music, video games and more. Crabtree-Ireland has played a critical role in many of SAG-AFTRA’s signature achievements over the past two decades, both in his current role and prior to that as long-time chief operating officer and general counsel. Notably, he was a key participant in the successful merger between SAG and AFTRA in 2012, and serves as the principal architect of SAG-AFTRA’s successful COVID safety response and return-to-work initiatives. Crabtree-Ireland is a strategic and creative lead negotiator, and has personally led or overseen negotiations for SAG-AFTRA’s Commercials, Music, Network Code, and Netflix contracts, among others. Crabtree-Ireland is bilingual in English and Spanish, and has been the lead negotiator for SAG-AFTRA’s contract with the Telemundo network for Spanish language productions since its inception, oversees the union’s bilingual initiative, and is a co-host of the SAG-AFTRA podcast en Español. Crabtree-Ireland formerly served as a criminal prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office and has received numerous awards for his work and service throughout his career, including the Peggy Browning Award, the Corporate Counsel Award from the Los Angeles Business Journal, the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Samuel L. Williams Outstanding Trustee Award, the Profiles in Diversity Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel and the California Minority Counsel Project, the Co-President’s Award from the Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Bar Association, and the Labor Counsel of the Year award from the Association of Media & Entertainment Counsel. In 2019, he received the SAG-AFTRA George Heller Memorial Award for extraordinary service to SAG-AFTRA and its members. He is the chair of the board of trustees of the SAG-AFTRA & Industry Sound Recordings Distribution Fund, the co-chair of the board of trustees of the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund, a member of the boards of the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly known as The Actors Fund), and SoundExchange, and is a delegate to the International Federation of Actors where he serves as convenor of its North America and English Speaking groups and co-convenor of its Global Diversity Working Group. He served as a longtime adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Law School. He is a past chair of the Conference of California Bar Associations, a past treasurer of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, a past co-president of the LGBTQ Bar Association of Los Angeles, and has served by appointment as a judge pro tem of the Los Angeles Superior Court. Previously, Crabtree-Ireland served as Screen Actors Guild’s deputy national executive director. Crabtree-Ireland received his Bachelor of Science in foreign service with a concentration in international relations, law, and organization from Georgetown University and his Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of Barristers. Crabtree-Ireland lives in Los Angeles with his husband, John, and their five children.