Panelists included Helen Blank, Director of Child Care and Early Learning, National Women’s Law Center; Susan Brenner, Senior Vice President of Education, Bright Horizons Family Solutions; Denise Dowell, Director Early Learning and Care Programs, CSEA; and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director, CEO, and Co-Founder, MomsRising.  The event was moderated by Catherine Rampell, Founding Editor of the Economix blog and Reporter, The New York Times.

Watch the video here.

These profiles were developed in conjunction with the Reinventing Low-Wage Work: Ideas that Can Work for Employees, Employers and the Economy discussion series that was hosted by AspenWSI in 2012 and early-2013 with support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and Ford Foundation.  Recordings of the events, which included leaders from the organizations mentioned above in addition to employers, industry experts and journalists, can be viewed on-line here.

 Profiles of the Direct-Care Workforce and PHI

This report provides an overview of work in the direct-care industry and profiles PHI (Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute), an organization dedicated to improving employment for direct-care workers in the U.S.

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Profiles of the Residential Construction Workforce and the Workers Defense Project

This report details the dynamics and challenges of the residential construction industry and provides a profile of the Workers Defense Project, a non-profit and membership-based organization based in Austin, Texas that seeks to provide low-wage workers, particularly those in the construction industry, with resources to improve their working and living conditions.

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Profiles of the Retail Workforce and the Retail Action Project

 This report illustrates the state of low-wage work in the retail industry and provides a profile of the Retail Action Project, an organization striving to improve job quality in retail.

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Profiles of the Restaurant Workforce and Restaurant Opportunities Center United                

This report details the state of low-wage work in the restaurant industry and provides a profile of Restaurant Opportunities Center- United, an organization striving to empower low-wage restaurant workers, employers, and consumers to collectively improve job quality in the industry.

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Date:  May 9th, 2013  Time:  12:00-1:30 PM EST

Location:  The Aspen Institute in Washington D.C.

One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 700

Washington, DC 20036

RSVP to attend

About the Event

In May, we will celebrate Mother’s Day, a holiday created by Americans to honor our moms and their influence in society.  With the presence of women with children in the workforce increasing, mothers are not only the glue that holds our homes together, but they are also the fuel helping to drive our economic recovery.  Two-thirds of women with young children now work and nearly half are the primary breadwinner within their family.  As more moms enter the workforce and “lean in” to build a successful career and household, however, the affordable, quality early care and education system their families need to lean on is noticeably absent.  The women and moms working in the early care and education industry also face significant challenges.  Low wages, few benefits and limited training or advancement opportunities are widespread in the early care and education industry, which contributes to high worker turnover, further eroding the quality of care.  In this event, speakers will discuss how we can have both an early care and education system that provides good jobs and quality, affordable care.

Speakers and Moderator

Susan Brenner, Senior Vice President of Education, Bright Horizons Family Solutions

Dr. Susan Brenner has been part of Bright Horizons Family Solutions senior management team for over twenty years. She was instrumental in the development and start-up of stand-alone back-up centers, and is a leader in the field of back-up/emergency care.  She was the Senior Vice President of Operations and now oversees Education at Bright Horizons.  Bright Horizons Family Solutions is a leading provider of early education and preschools, employer-sponsored child care, back-up care, educational advisory services and other work/life solutions.in the United States.  Bright Horizons has consistently been cited by Fortune magazine as of the top 100 companies to work for in the United States.  Dr. Brenner has her Doctorate in Leadership and Policy Studies from Temple University.

Denise Dowell, Director Early Learning and Care Programs, CSEA

Denise has worked in early childhood education for almost 30 years.  She has experience as a family child care provider, classroom teacher, center director, educator, and advocate.  Denise began working to unionize child care providers and teachers in 1997, when she co-founded the United Child Care Union and was a founding member of the Philadelphia Area Jobs with Justice Coalition.  As Coordinator of Child Care Providers Together, a project of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Denise provided support and technical assistance to AFSCME affiliates and served as national liaison to early childhood professional organizations and advocates. Denise currently directs the CSEA Early Learning and Care Program.  CSEA represents over 20,000 registered family, licensed group family and legally exempt child care providers outside NYC.  She earned a PhD in Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr. Her research, organizing, and policy work has focused on improving the quality of work and care in early childhood education.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director, CEO, and Co-Founder, MomsRising

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner has been deeply involved in grassroots engagement and policy analysis for more than two decades. Started in May 2006, MomsRising is an on-the-ground and online organization with more than 1 million members, more than 750 contributing bloggers, and more than a hundred aligned national organizations working together to increase family economic security, to end discrimination against women and mothers, and to help ensure all children can thrive.  Rowe-Finkbeiner serves as board President of the MomsRising Education Fund.  In 2012, Forbes.com named MomsRising’s website one of the “Top 100 Websites For Women” for the third year in a row.  She has received numerous accolades for her work, including fellowships from the Rockwood Institute and the Hunt Alternatives Fund, awards from the Washington State League of Women Voters, and ParentMap Magazine. Her awards for writing include the Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism award for magazine writing, the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Award, as well as an award from the Independent Book Publishers Association.  Rowe-Finkbeiner is also a frequent public speaker, radio host, and an award-winning author of books, including The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy and The Motherhood Manifesto, which she co-authored with MomsRising co-founder and board President Joan Blades. She has written articles on a variety of topics, including women and families, public policy, motherhood, economic security, equality, health, civic engagement, and new feminism. She is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and has been interviewed about issues related to women and mothers, family economic security, and grassroots organizing by numerous international, national and local news outlets, including, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, Today Show, Good Morning America, NOW with David Brancaccio, To the Contrary an d BBC World Service.  Rowe-Finkbeiner is also the host of “MomsRising Radio with Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner,” a new, weekly, hour-long show on 1480AM in Washington, D.C. and available on iTunes.

Lynette Fraga, Executive Director, Child Care Aware of America

Dr. Fraga comes to Child Care Aware® of America from Care.com, a global care company providing a forum for families seeking care support, where she served as Vice President of Early Care and Special Populations. While there, she supported the company’s commitment to identify care solutions for children with special needs, support military-connected families identify care options for their loved ones across the lifespan, and support the development of quality partnerships in the public and private sectors.  Prior to Care.com, Dr. Fraga was at ZERO TO THREE, the leading national nonprofit whose mission is to support the healthy development of babies and toddlers, where she served as the Chief Program Officer responsible for leading and managing the organization’s comprehensive array of programs and services. As a content expert on the social and emotional needs of infants and toddlers she played a key role in improving the quality and availability of training f or infant/toddler professionals within the Early Head Start and child care communities. Dr. Fraga also created and directed ZERO TO THREE’s Military Family Projects initiative that supports infants and toddlers in military families.  Early in her career, Dr. Fraga worked in the field of special education, subsequently taught young children and later used that foundation to coordinate and direct early childhood programs for the military. Throughout her career, she has been engaged and played leadership roles in early childhood development and mental health practice, administration, training and research. Dr. Fraga holds a doctoral degree from Kansas State University in Family Studies, a master’s degree in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma, graduate coursework in early childhood education at Cameron University and a bachelor’s degree in Special Education from the University of Arizona.

Catherine Rampell, Reporter, The New York Times

Catherine Rampell writes about economics for The New York Times, where she served as the founding editor of the Economix blog. Under her stewardship the blog was honored with an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. She has also received the Weidenbaum Center Award for Evidence-Based Journalism and is a Gerald Loeb Award finalist. In addition to her economics coverage, Catherine also writes theater reviews for The Times.  Before joining The Times, Catherine worked at The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Public Radio, The Village Voice, USA Today, NBC and various other news outlets. She grew up in South Florida (the New York part) and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton.

View video recording here.

Maya Goodwin, Research Assistant at WSI, authored a blog post reflecting on the insights shared at the event “Raising the Minimum Wage: A Different Approach to the Jobs Problem.” View the post here.

View video

Date:  Febrary 1^st, 2013 
Time:  12:00-1:30 EST
Location:  The Aspen Institute in Washington D.C. (RSVP to attend or View live stream here)

Home Economics: A Discussion about the Unregulated World of Domestic Work

This is the sixth conversation in a roundtable series titled “Reinventing Low Wage Work: Ideas That Can Work for Employees, Employers and the Economy.” Low-wage jobs are a growing part of the U.S. economy, and AspenWSI is excited to continue this conversation about the nature of low-wage work, the challenges it presents to workers, businesses and the economy, and the opportunities we have for addressing these challenges at the Aspen Institute at a time when jobs and the economy are such critical topics for our country.    Join us for this important conversation on domestic workers, those that are employed in our homes to care for children, elderly and the disabled and who also often perform a variety of other duties such as cooking and cleaning, are critical to our economy, society and our families’ well-being., moderated by Jennifer Ludden of NPR.

Featured speakers include:

Judy Patrick, President and CEO, The Women’s Foundation of California

Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Mary Romero, Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University

Barbara Young, National Organizer and former Domestic Worker, National Domestic Workers Alliance

About the Speakers and Moderator

Judy Patrick, President and CEO, The Women’s Foundation of California Judy Patrick is President and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California. Prior to her appointment in 2008, Judy held the post of Executive Vice President of Programs for nine years. In that role, Judy led the Foundation’s advocacy and policy change work, including the development of the groundbreaking Women’s Policy Institute. She also worked to develop programs to strengthen grant partners’ organizational capacity and to evaluate the impact of their work. Prior to coming to the Foundation, Judy directed the work of several nonprofits. She was executive director of the San Francisco-based Women’s Philharmonic and director of Girls Count, a Colorado initiative to change systems that impact girls’ educational achievement and career planning. She also led Mi Casa Resource Center for Women, a Denver organization that advances self-sufficiency primarily for low-income Latinas and youth. She has served on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Denver and Regis University, where she taught program development and evaluation. Judy has worked as a researcher and program evaluator in both the public and private sectors. She serves on numerous boards of directors.

Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), has been organizing immigrant women workers since 1996. In 2000 she co-founded Domestic Workers United, the New York organization that spearheaded the successful passage of the state’s historic Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010. In 2007, DWU helped organize the first national domestic workers convening, out of which formed the NDWA. Ai-jen serves on the Board of Directors of Momsrising, National Jobs with Justice, Working America, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the National Council on Aging. Among Ai-jen’s numerous accolades are the Ms. Foundation Woman of Vision Award, the Independent Sector American Express NGen Leadership Award, Newsweek’s 150 Fearless Women list, and the Time 100 list.

Mary Romero, Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University Mary Romero is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. She is the author of The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside of the American Dream and Maid in the U.S.A. She has written extensively on domestic work. She received the American Sociology American Section on Race and Ethnicity Minorities 2009 Founder’s Award [Recognize career excellence in scholarship and service]. In 2004, she received the Society for the Study of Social Problems’ Lee Founders Award 2004, the highest award made by the Society for the Study of Social Problems for a career of activist scholarship. She is a former Carnegie Scholar, Pew National Fellowship for Carnegie Scholars, Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She served on the Law and Society Association Board of Trustees (Class of 2008) and the Council of the American Sociological Association (2007-2009). She serves on the international editorial board of Brill’s “Critical Studies in Social Science” and National Review Board of Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Her research focuses on the unequal distribution of reproductive labor as a paid commodity and its role in reproducing inequality among families within countries and between nations. Her research also includes writings on social inequalities and justice that incorporate the intersection of race, class, gender, and citizenship and links the parallels between domestic gendered race relations and immigration and identifies the continuum between racism against citizens and racism against noncitizens.

Barbara Young, National Organizer, National Domestic Workers Alliance Barbara has been a domestic worker for the past 17 years, and is well acquainted with both the exploitation domestic workers face—and the potential of domestic workers to organize for lasting change. She is an active member of Domestic Workers United (DWU), one of the NDWA’s founding affiliate organizations, and has provided consistent and inspiring leadership for the NDWA since its foundation. Barbara was instrumental in mobilizing her fellow domestic workers to win the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in New York. She now uses her experiences with the Bill of Rights campaign to inspire and motivate domestic workers in other parts of the country to fight for similar protections. As a member of DWU’s Steering Committee for the past eight years, Barbara has helped grow DWU’s membership and deepen its impact through a simultaneous commitment to the organization’s internal operations and its external work. Barbara is a powerful public speaker who has represented DWU and the NDWA in numerous events and in the media. She has helped build bridges between sectors of excluded workers within the U.S. through testimony at the Excluded Workers’ Congress, and has worked to build a global domestic workers’ movement through collaborations with Grassroots Global Justice and the Association for Women in Development. Prior to moving to the U.S., Barbara was active in the labor movement in her native Barbados.

Jennifer Ludden, Correspondent, National Desk, National Public Radio Jennifer Ludden is a correspondent on NPR’s National Desk. She covers a range of stories on family life and social issues. In recent years, Ludden has reported on the changing economics of marriage, the changing face of retirement as the baby boomers enter old age, and the ethical challenges of modern reproductive technology. Ludden helped cover national security after the 9/11 attacks, then reported on the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants as well as Congressional efforts to pass a sweeping legalization. She traveled to the Philippines for a story on how an overburdened immigration bureaucracy keeps families separated for years, and to El Salvador to profile migrants who had been deported or turned back at the border. Prior to moving into her current assignment in 2002, Ludden spent six years as a foreign reporter for NPR covering the Middle East, Europe, and West and Central Africa. She followed the collapse of the decade-long Oslo peace process, shared in two awards (Overseas Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists) for NPR’s coverage of the Kosovo war in 1999, and won the Robert F. Kennedy award for her coverage of the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When not navigating war zones, Ludden reported on cultural trends, including the dying tradition of storytellers in Syria, the emergence of Persian pop music in Iran, and the rise of a new form of urban polygamy in Africa. Before joining NPR in 1995, Ludden reported in Canada, and at public radio stations in Boston and Maine. Ludden graduated from Syracuse University in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in English and Television, Radio and Film Production.