Assistant Secretary

Khiera Peña is the UFT’s assistant secretary as well as an arbitration advocate for the UFT Grievance Department. As an undergraduate sociology student at the University of Georgia, she was inspired to teach while working as a reading tutor in the America Reads work-study program. Khiera joined the NYC Teaching Fellows program and became an English as a new language teacher in 2005. She went on to earn a master’s degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from CUNY Lehman College.

Khiera taught ENL for nearly a decade at PS 114 in the Bronx, where she was the UFT chapter leader for six years. One of her proudest accomplishments as chapter leader was organizing the chapter in support of a long-term substitute teacher who was dismissed after being assaulted by a student. During her time as chapter leader, Khiera learned about union activism and was encouraged by District 9 Representative Carol Harrison to pursue learning and service opportunities within the union. Khiera became a convention delegate to the NYSUT and AFT conventions; she remains in that role today. She also served as a part-time pension consultant in the UFT’s Bronx borough office for five years.

After completing arbitration advocacy training and working in the department as a part-time union staffer, Khiera became a full-time special representative and arbitration advocate in the UFT Grievance Department in 2014. Since then, she has represented the union in hundreds of arbitrations, achieving victories that resulted in winning thousands of dollars for members, securing reinstatement and back pay for discharged and suspended members, getting teachers’ adverse ratings overturned, getting disciplinary letters and adverse observation reports removed from members’ personnel files, and obtaining reinstatement for excessed members, among other victories.

Khiera also negotiates nurse contracts with the Federation of Nurses/UFT and is a member of the negotiating team for DOE employee contracts. She is a graduate of the New York State AFL-CIO/Cornell University Union Leadership Institute, where she created a project that streamlined the process for selecting arbitration advocacy trainees.

Khiera serves as a liaison to the School Secretaries Chapter and a board trustee for Amber Charter School. She has received the UFT’s Smallheiser and Marsh-Raimo awards for union advocacy.

She was elected by the position of UFT assistant secretary by the UFT Executive Board in May 2026.

Khiera’s most treasured responsibility is raising two young daughters and one adult stepdaughter with her husband Moisés.