Winter 2014-15
Around the Quads
Ai-jen Poo ’96 Wins “Genius Grant”
By Alex Sachare ’71
On September 17, Poo was named by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as one of 21 members of the 2014 class of MacArthur Fellows. Known informally as “genius grants,” the fellowships recognize “exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for significant contributions in the future,” according to the foundation.
Winners receive a stipend of $625,000, paid across five years, with no strings attached. “The fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential,” the foundation says, and allows recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions.
The foundation credits Poo’s “compelling vision of the value of home-based care work” and cites her as a labor organizer who is “catalyzing a vibrant, worker-led movement for improved working conditions and labor standards for domestic or private-household workers.”
Asked what she plans to do with the grant, Poo told NBC News, “The plan is to create a fellowship for caregivers and domestic workers to be able to work for the National Domestic Workers Alliance as national public policy fellows to really get them to learn the workings of policy so that they can better impact the broad set of policies that affect their lives. They’ve already been doing that work to win expanded rights for domestic workers. We’re going to build that up to develop policy expertise.”
“Domestic work is the Wild West: You never know what you’re going to get and it runs the spectrum,” Poo said in an interview with NBC. “Some people work for wonderful families who they stay in contact with for many generations. On the other end there’s human smuggling and modern slavery-like conditions. And there’s nothing there to protect these workers — no guidelines, no clear workplace standards, which means that even employers [who] want to do the right thing for their employees don’t always know what that is.”
Poo and the other members of this year’s class join 897 other MacArthur Fellows whom the program has recognized since it began in 1981. Fellows, who work in diverse fields and often across multiple disciplines, are selected through a process that has involved thousands of expert and anonymous nominators, evaluators and selectors through the years. The foundation does not accept unsolicited or outside nominations.