President, National Domestic Workers Alliance; Executive Director, Caring Across Generations
2024 John Jay Award Honoree

Ai-jen Poo CC’96 is a next-generation labor leader, award-winning organizer, author and a leading voice in the women’s movement.

She is the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, executive director of Caring Across Generations and a trustee of the Ford Foundation. She recently served as a commissioner on President Biden’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

Poo is a nationally recognized expert on the care economy and is the author of the celebrated book The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. She has been recognized among Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and Time’s 100 Most Influential People, and received a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “Genius Grant.” Most recently, she received the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.

Poo has been a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Milken Institute Global Conference, TEDWomen and the Skoll World Forum. She has made appearances on PBS, Nightline, MSNBC and CBS; and has been a guest on popular podcasts such as On Being with Krista Tippett, We Can Do Hard Things and The Ezra Klein Show. Together with civil rights activist Alicia Garza, she hosts the podcast Sunstorm, and her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Marie Claire, Glamour and Cosmopolitan, and on CNN.com, among others. Poo earned a B.A. in women’s and gender studies and holds honorary degrees from CUNY and The New School.

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