Anna Shireen Wadia is part of the Future of Work team. Her grant making has focused on expanding access to unemployment insurance and ensuring that all workers earn a family-supporting wage and have access to paid sick days and paid family leave.
Anna has been with the foundation since 2009 and also worked with Ford earlier. She was previously a consultant for the Annie E. Casey and Ms. Foundations, the National Council for Research on Women, and MDRC. Her practice focused on analyzing, implementing, and assessing strategies to improve low-wage jobs and increase opportunities for low-income women and families; providing technical assistance to grantees; and analyzing effective grant-making strategies.
Prior to launching her consulting business, Anna managed community and economic development programming for the Ms. Foundation for Women in the United States and for the Ford Foundation and Catholic Relief Services in Africa.
Anna co-authored Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses(Westview, 2002), as well as several reports on best practices in women’s economic empowerment. She holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.
Anna was a participant at the 2018 Economic Security Summit, which was held July 9-12, 2018, in Aspen, Colorado.