What does it mean to enjoy dignity on the job, and to build a career dedicated to ensuring every woman can thrive?

Drawing on her journey from Mount Holyoke to grassroots organizing to executive leadership, Sarita Gupta ’96 connects the dots between personal career pathways and the systemic forces shaping women's lives today.

Gupta will surface the urgent pressures facing women workers in the US and around the globe, from the physical tolls of heat stress to the invisible weight of informality and unpaid care. She will offer a provocative look at the digital age, examining how AI and automation are currently doing to working-class women what deindustrialization once did to blue-collar men.

Yet, the core of this talk is collective power. Exploring the phrase "the world of work," a game-changing term won by women workers at the International Labor Conference, Gupta celebrates the transformations that are being driven by women-led movements, from SEWA and the International Domestic Workers Federation, to the Model Alliance and Jobs with Justice. This session is an invitation to learn how women-led movements are moving beyond navigating the world of work to designing a more equitable future for every worker. This session, ultimately, is an invitation to lead together.

Sarita Gupta ’96 is vice president of U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation, overseeing the foundation’s domestic work, including Civic Engagement and Government, Creativity and Free Expression, Future of Work(ers), Technology and Society, Disability Rights, and Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice. She develops vision and strategy to address the political, economic and cultural drivers of inequality. Gupta joined the foundation in 2019 as director of the Future of Work(ers) program, having served as the Executive Director of Jobs With Justice and Co-Director of Caring Across Generations. She is the co-author of The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century.

This event is cosponsored by the Gender Studies Department, the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives and the Weissman Center for Leadership.