Watch the third installment in the Women in the Economy dialogues for an in-depth discussion with Aspen FSP Co-Executive Director Joanna Smith-Ramani and award-winning advocate, organizer, and author Ai-jen Poo about how to build a supportive and effective care economy for women. The conversation will explore the many challenges facing family and professional caregivers today, as well as the promising public policy and private sector solutions that could enable all workers to work, care, and thrive.
The Women in the Economy Dialogue Series, hosted by the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, features in-depth discussions with journalists, authors, filmmakers, and other thought leaders about how to redesign the economy so women are able to strive, thrive, and fully contribute to their families’ financial security and the nation’s economic growth.
*By “women,” we mean all individuals who identify as female.
Speakers
Ai-jen Poo, Executive Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Director, Caring Across Generations, Co-Founder, SuperMajority, Trustee, Ford Foundation, Author, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America, Co-host, Sunstorm podcast
Ai-jen Poo 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. Poo earned a B.A. in women’s and gender studies at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from CUNY and The New School.
Joanna Smith-Ramani, Co-Executive Director, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program
Joanna Smith-Ramani is Co-Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, a leading national voice on Americans’ financial security. Working with the team, she is building a cross-sector community of leaders (Joanna calls her “quirky Thanksgiving table”) who, together, are using their shared wisdom and humanity to deeply investigate and solve the most critical financial challenges facing U.S. households.
Joanna has over 20 years of experience across community, personal finance, and financial security. Most recently serving as Managing Director, she joined Aspen FSP as the Director of its Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative (EPIC), where she built the program from the ground up and conceptualized and launched EPIC’s first two issues—income volatility and household debt—which FSP studies from causes to broader impact to market and policy solutions. Before joining FSP, Joanna served as Senior Innovation Director at Commonwealth, leading the unit that designs, tests, and evaluates promising financial service innovations. While at Commonwealth, Joanna developed innovations to improve savings and financial capability, including prize-linked savings, tax time savings, gamification, emergency savings, and youth savings. Additionally, Joanna led several federal grants, developed and sustained national coalitions, and built a network of industry partners.
Joanna has led national and state legislative campaigns resulting in the passage of a federal law and more than ten state laws expanding savings innovation across the nation. She is a trusted expert on financial security and inclusion, having been quoted in numerous national and local media outlets such as the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Fox Cable News. Joanna holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. in Urban Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University. She serves on the Board of the CASH Campaign of Maryland, Community Organizing and Family Issues, and Business for America’s Future Fund.
Heather McCulloch, Senior Fellow, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program
Heather McCulloch is a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program and a national thought leader on gender economic equity. She launched the Women in the Economy (WE) project at Aspen FSP, a two-year initiative to inform the design of a gender-equitable economy based on the insights, wisdom, and lived experience of working women across America.
Heather has more than two decades of experience working as an advocate and thought leader in closing the racial and gender wealth gaps and building an equitable economy. Previously, she founded and led Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap (CWWG), a multiracial/ethnic, cross-sector network of leaders working together to transform public policies and systems to advance gender economic equity. Prior to starting CWWG, she was the principal of Asset Building Strategies, a consulting firm that supported nonprofit, philanthropic, public, and private-sector leaders to advance policies and strategies to build the financial security of low-wealth families; and a founding staff member of the national nonprofit, PolicyLink.
Her insights have been covered in major news publications, including CNN Business, Fast Company, The Hill, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, NPR Marketplace, Slate, and USA Today. She earned an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.
