Ai-jen Poo

Who is Ai-jen Poo?

Ai-jen Poo is an American activist. She is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is also co-director of Caring Across Generations, a national coalition of 200 advocacy organizations, advocating for home care workers and patients, as well as the lead organizer and founder of Domestic Workers United, an organization of Caribbean, Latina, and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York, organizing for "power, respect and fair labor standards".

In 2010 Domestic Workers United was instrumental in New York state passing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights into law; this law was the first in the United States to guarantee domestic workers overtime pay, three days’ paid leave, and legal protections from harassment and discrimination.

Ai-Jen Poo's Taiwanese parents instilled her with strong "social justice values". Her father was a scientist and one-time political activist who immigrated from Taiwan in the 1970s. She graduated from Columbia University, where she was one of more than 100 students who occupied the rotunda in Low Library; this occupation led to the creation of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.