Merrit Stüven is an associate director at the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. Her work includes managing projects and conducting research focused on job quality and economic security, primarily for lower-income workers. She is especially passionate about worker power, gender and racial equity, and creating an economic system that centers the needs of people.
Before joining the Institute, Merrit completed a Master of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she researched job quality, unionization, and economic equity, including at the Shift Project and the Women and Public Policy Program’s Gender Action Portal. Prior to graduate school, Merrit worked in international development, most recently at the International Rescue Committee in London, where she managed grants supporting refugees’ access to education and economic development. Merrit also holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and human rights from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Through her work and education, she has been a proud union member and organizer, at Unite the Union in the UK and at the Harvard Graduate Students Union, a UAW local. In her free time, Merrit enjoys making things, especially cooking, baking, and sewing, and spending as much time as she can near bodies of water.
