Amber Lynn Parrish and Vikrum Dave Aiyer met as adversaries, fiercely fighting on opposite sides of a nationwide debate over whether companies like Uber, Instacart and Postmates should treat workers as employees as opposed to independent contractors.
She was the executive director of the labor union United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council. He was leading public policy at Postmates, which is now owned by Uber.
Their first in-person meeting was in San Francisco in the spring of 2019, shortly after she had taken on the executive director role at U.F.C.W. Aiyer walked in with a cheery and optimistic attitude.
Parrish had worked for the labor movement for 13 years and was skeptical of and unimpressed by Aiyer, who had worked as an economic adviser for former President Barack Obama.
“I felt like there were a lot of people who came over from D.C. in the Obama White House and had ideas about how tech should operate in California,” Parrish said. “I had spent two decades of my life working on that.”
Over the next few months, there were endless bargaining sessions, television appearances and court fights. In September 2019, labor leaders took a big victory when California became the first state to approve a landmark bill that required companies like Uber and Lyft to treat contract workers as employees.
Aiyer and fellow tech executives were preparing to take the issue to the ballot in the November 2020 election. But as a last-ditch effort, in January 2020, Aiyer asked Parrish to meet for drinks at the San Francisco Proper Hotel to discuss whether there was still a path to a deal.
That night, they met as the people behind their differing positions. Rather than talking business, they spent hours talking about their families and childhoods.
The two became friends. They discovered that although they disagreed on policy, they were “motivated by many of the same questions,” Aiyer said.
“I found him to be very thoughtful, and very genuinely interested in what’s best for workers,” Parrish said.
They worked together through the Covid-19 pandemic on measures to protect frontline workers, and they checked in on each other. “There was such a sweetness to our friendship,” she said.
But they were still on opposing sides of this political fight. Aiyer was working on a campaign to pass Proposition 22, a ballot measure that would exempt his company from the new labor law. Five companies — DoorDash, Instacart, Uber, Lyft, and Postmates — spent $200 million on ads. They won. California voters carried Uber and Postmates to victory.
“It felt really personal to me,” Parrish said about the loss.
It was a messy time for both of them. She had also developed feelings over the past year for Aiyer, who admits he was not a good romantic interest at that time in his life. Parrish put their friendship on pause.
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In spring 2021, they took a walk around the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and decided they would be friends again. They call it “the friendship walk.”
Over the next few months, Aiyer realized that he had been shoving down his feelings for her, in part because of their differences, “because here’s a person who represents a much further to the left position than I am,” he said. He had a lot of affection for her, and he admired her convictions. Aiyer expressed this to her early that summer, but Parrish was cautious.
Throughout the summer, he planned several “friends dates” where he would present her two pieces of paper, each one containing an option for an activity that he had made a reservation for, and she would pick one. On one particularly warm and fuzzy friend date, on July 14, they leaned in and kissed on the beach.
“And this friendship was transitioning into something different,” Parrish said.
By the end of the year, they were in a serious relationship.
In November 2024, with the help of her two children from a previous marriage, Aiyer proposed at Yerba Buena Gardens — where they once sat on opposite sides of a tense round of negotiations.
Aiyer, 40, is now the head of global public policy at Heirloom Carbon Technologies. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
Parrish, 45, is an external affairs manager at Google and graduated from California State University, Sacramento with a bachelor’s degree in communications, political science and government.
On July 23, they married at San Francisco City Hall. Ramneek Saini, a close friend previously ordained by the American Marriage Ministries, officiated.
The next day, they held a traditional Tamil Brahmin wedding ceremony at the Shiva-Vishnu Temple in Livermore, Calif., honoring his family’s South Indian heritage. And the following day, a blended reception took place with about 350 guests at the Conservatory at One Sansome in San Francisco.
Though they have both moved on from their former roles, they still disagree on politics. “Vikrum’s a former debater, so arguing with him is very annoying,” Parrish said. But, she added, “I do think we’ve learned to be more constructive with our disagreements to push each other to see a different angle.”
“At a moment when so many stories are about choosing sides, ours is about two people who listened long enough to understand one another,” Aiyer said, “and built a life together.”
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