Sarita Gupta is the Director of the Future of Work(ers) Program at the Ford Foundation. She leads the team that oversees Ford’s efforts to actively shape a future of work that puts workers and their well-being at the center. The program is focused on increasing the voice and influence of all workers, particularly those with the least power historically, in reimagining labor and social policies. The program also supports efforts to ensure that working people have a seat at decision-making tables to inform business practices, new technologies, and economic strategies that prioritize worker stability and security, and advance an equitable economy.
Sarita joined the Ford Foundation with more than 20 years of experience working to expand people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives by creating solutions to the problems they face. She has deep expertise in policy advocacy, organizing, and building partnerships across the workers’ rights and care movements, having served as the Executive Director of Jobs With Justice and Co-Director of Caring Across Generations. She is a recognized expert on the economic, labor, and political issues affecting working people.
During her tenure at Jobs With Justice, Sarita has been on the front lines of successful organizing and policy campaigns to boost wages and working conditions for all working people and improve labor and civil rights protections for immigrant men and women. Sarita played a key role in seeding numerous campaigns and efforts like the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, which is a global coalition of trade unions, workers’ rights and human rights organizations that is actively innovating regional initiatives for higher wages in the global garment industry; the United Workers Congress, bringing together workers centers and organizations focused on raising labor standards and protections for low wage workers across industries; and Caring Across Generations, a national movement of families, caregivers, people with disabilities, and aging Americans working to shape the care economy and transform the way we care so that all families can live well and age with dignity.
She is a Hunt Alternatives Fund Prime Movers Fellow as well as a graduate of the Rockwood Leadership Training Program. Among the awards Sarita has received are the National Women’s Law Center Annual Leadership Award, the Francis Perkins Open Door Award, a Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Achievement Award, and Corporate Ethics International’s BENNY Award.
Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Rochester, NY, Sarita currently lives in Silver Spring, MD, with her husband and daughter. When she is not working, you can find her practicing yoga, reading mysteries or other great books, and coaching her 10-year old daughter’s soccer team.