Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/716514
26 SAG-AFTRA | Summer 2016 | SAGAFTRA.org Gabrielle Carteris is Making History Union's New President Hits the Ground Running I t was her third trip to Washington, D.C., in almost as many months and her sixth to the East Coast since becoming president of SAG-AFTRA in April. But Gabrielle Carteris wasn't thinking about the time she'd spent on the road away from her youngest daughter or about the Los Angeles set of CBS's Code Black, where she'll return for a second season as Nurse Amy. Instead, as Carteris moved to the lectern inside a packed boardroom to accept her seat on the Executive Council at the AFL-CIO's national headquarters, the hyphenate mother-actor-union leader thought of just one word: service. Carteris' journey into union service began almost a decade earlier. She was in Canada shooting a Lifetime movie when, in a moment, her life changed. An injury that occurred during a fight scene left her partially paralyzed. "Thank God for my union," she recalled. "I took several years to get better, but I was fortunate to have a residual stream coming in from previous work for nearly 10 years after my injury." Carteris is quick to point out that her right to receive residuals from 2