Ai-jen Poo
Director and Co-Founder, National Domestic Workers AllianceMovement: Domestic Workers Rights
For the past 12 years,
Ai-jen Poo has organized immigrant women working as nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers for the elderly, or, as she puts it, "doing the work that makes all other work possible." As co-founder of Domestic Workers United, an organization promoting justice for the more than 200,000 women involved in domestic work in the greater New York area, Ai-jen promotes the rights of some of the most marginalized members of the workforce. "The domestic work industry is a microcosm of the triumphs and failures of our society as a whole," says Ai-jen. "Everyone relies upon domestic work in one way or another, yet it is erased from our consciousness and denied dignity." Domestic workers have been excluded from collective bargaining and labor rights in the past; other such groups include farm workers and undocumented immigrants. Ai-jen is hoping to see others recognize the contributions of domestic workers and to ensure the workforce is included as labor laws are established. She led the campaign in New York State for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which she hopes will set a national precedent in labor law not just for domestic workers but for all other excluded workers' groups as well.
In 2007 at the US Social Forum—and the first national meeting of domestic workers’ rights organizations—Ai-jen became a co-founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which now includes more than 20 organizations in 10 states across the country. The National Domestic Workers Alliance currently has over 10,000 members. Ai-jen began her career at CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, where she worked with Asian immigrant populations in low-wage service industries. In more than ten years at CAAAV, she worked on multiracial organizing and on fundraising as special projects director and, as an Open Society Institute Community Fellow, she organized a citywide campaign called "Dignity for Domestic Workers." From 1997 to 2000 she was a women workers project director, first conducting outreach and offering English classes to Asian women in the sex industry and later organizing Asian domestic workers. In 2009 Ai-jen was awarded the Alston–Bannerman Fellowship for Organizers of Color, and she was named a "Power Woman" by New York Moves magazine and one of Crain’s New York’s "40 Under 40." She has been a member of the board of Social Justice Leadership since 2008. Ai-jen has a bachelor’s degree in women and gender studies from Columbia University.
