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AI-JEN POO ’96
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY AI-JEN POO ’96
“Fear often gets in the way of our taking risks necessary to
make real change in the world,” Poo adds. “The tattoo is a reminder
to draw upon my inner tiger and to be courageous in the
face of uncertainty in the service of a vision for a better world.”
DWU was the major force behind New York’s Domestic
Workers’ Bill of Rights, which took effect on November 29, 2010,
three months after then-Gov. David Paterson ’77 signed it into
law. The country’s first, it entitles domestic workers to overtime
pay, one day of rest a week, three paid days off a year after one
year with the same employer and inclusion in the state’s Human
Rights Law, which protects against sexual harassment and discrimination.
The law applies to all domestic workers regardless
of legal status (there are an estimated 200,000 domestic workers
in the New York metropolitan area, according to DWU). California’s
state legislature is considering a similar bill.
“It was a breakthrough moment,” Poo says. “We forced the
state of New York to recognize domestic work as real work that
deserves inclusion and protection, and reversed a legacy of exclusion
and discrimination.”
the 1996 protests that called for more culturally diverse course
offerings. Three years later, Columbia’s Center for the Study of
Ethnicity and Race was established.
“We were all working together with one really strong message
to push the University to recognize this piece of intellectual
work that is so important to how this country has unfolded,”
Poo recalls. “We wanted to send a message of how important it
was for students to have access to that information.
“Students really worked together across communities. That
was one of the things that was so powerful about it. It was a really
exciting time. It informed how I understood how change happens
and gave me a sense of the potential of organizing.”
Born in Pittsburgh to Chinese immigrants, Poo transferred to
the College after a year at Washington University in St. Louis,
where she had enrolled with plans to become a potter. “I missed
reading books, literature in particular,” says Poo, whose father,
Mu-ming Poo, was a pro-democracy activist in Taiwan and
taught in Columbia’s Department of Biological Sciences from
1988–95; her mother is an oncologist.
“Ai-jen makes the possibility for radical change palpable.
She not only believes in the basic goodness of all people but also
that we all inherently want fairness and equality to prevail.”
For more than five years after Assemblyman Keith Wright
(D-Manhattan) and Sen. Diane Savino (D-Brooklyn/Staten Island)
introduced the bill into the state legislature in 2004, DWU
staffers drove workers to Albany to lobby. Poo estimates that
she made upward of 50 trips herself. Among those who shared
their stories with lawmakers, she notes, was a Colombian woman
in her 60s who cared for a disabled child in order to afford insulin
for her own son. She worked more than 100 hours a week
for about $3 an hour, cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing for
the family of six, only to retire at day’s end to a basement with
an overflowing sewage system. She was fired suddenly without
severance pay. Other workers testified to humiliations and
sexual harassment by male employers.
“I’ve been fortunate to be a part of many collective efforts that
involved sacrifice, spirit, heart and commitment on the part of a
lot of domestic workers,” says Poo of DWU’s work. “It was never
me alone.”
Domestic workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations
Act, which protects the rights of most other private workers
to form unions, strike and bargain collectively. Nonetheless,
DWU has close to 7,000 members who pay $5 a month in dues
in return for free legal assistance, immigration advice and help
with resume building and job searching. Funding comes mostly
from private foundations. The organization’s board comprises
nine members who collaborate with director Priscilla Gonzalez
’98 Barnard, herself the daughter of a domestic worker.
“Ai-jen makes the possibility for radical change palpable,” says
Gonzalez. “She not only believes in the basic goodness of all people
but also that we all inherently want fairness and equality to prevail.”
Poo realized the power of grassroots activism as a College
student. She was arrested in April 1995 for blocking
the Manhattan Bridge as part of a city-wide protest
against police brutality. She also was among the students
who occupied Low Rotunda and Hamilton Hall during
“I was excited about having New York City as a place to learn
and grow,” she adds.
Within a year of her arrival, Poo shifted her focus from art to
women’s studies. “I’ve been really passionate about women’s
issues since high school,” she says. “When I got to Columbia,
the women’s studies department offered the opportunity to explore
the intellectual work that had been done around women’s
rights and how gender has shaped our world and our history.
“There are a lot of strong women in my family tradition,” adds
Poo, whose family includes sister Ting Poo ’00, a post-production
film editor. “My grandmothers and my mom are very important
role models for me.”
Soon after arriving in New York, Poo began staffing a hotline
as a volunteer at the New York Asian Women’s Center, a
domestic violence shelter for Asian immigrant women, where
she got her first taste of women’s activism. She later became involved
with the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, where
she was promoted to paid staff member upon graduation. Poo
co-founded DWU with colleagues from CAAAV, where she had
spearheaded an initiative that sought to empower Asian immigrant
women employed in low-wage service industries.
Poo met her husband, attorney Tony Lu, while recruiting volunteers
for CAAAV at NYU Law School, where Lu earned a J.D.
Lu now works for Pro Bono Net, a nonprofit that uses web technology
to increase access to justice for people who cannot afford
lawyers. The couple lives in Queens.
Poo now heads the NDWA, a coalition she helped establish
in 2007. It encompasses more than 30 member organizations nationwide
that seek respect and fair labor standards for domestic
workers. Though based in New York, Poo travels frequently to
meetings and public speaking engagements.
The NDWA celebrated in June when delegates to the International
Labour Conference — the annual meeting of the member
states of the U.N.’s International Labour Organization — adopted
the Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. The
While Poo credits the collective efforts of fellow advocates for her groups’ success, she still is on the front line and speaking out.
PHOTO: COURTESY AI-JEN POO ’96/NDWA
international treaty for the first time entitles domestic workers to
fundamental labor rights and is binding for the states that ratify
it. Though the United States has not done so, the NDWA worked
with the Department of Labor to draft the federal government’s
response. (The NDWA also had sent a domestic worker to the
conference as a voting delegate.)
In 2011, Poo’s groundbreaking work earned her the American
Express NGen Leadership Award bestowed by Independent
Sector, a leadership network for charities and foundations. The
award recognizes nonprofit leaders under 40 who have had a significant
impact on a societal need. The $3,000 grant has gone toward
training and capacity building for domestic worker leaders.
“Ai-jen is a leader of the present and future,” says Mikaela
Seligman, Independent Sector’s v.p. of nonprofit and philanthropic
leadership and practice. “The way she sees leadership is
that her role is not to be out in front publicly or privately, somehow
leading the charge, which is really a model of the past. Her
role is fundamentally to mobilize resources to achieve a goal. She
does that ably, she does that graciously and she does it with love.”
In 2009, the Center for Social Inclusion awarded Poo the
$25,000 Alston-Bannerman Fellowship for Organizers of Color,
which allowed her to take a four-month sabbatical, part of which
she spent re-energizing in Hawaii, a logical destination once she
mentions her affinity for the outdoors and “places where mountains
and ocean meet.” Poo’s husband and a few friends accompanied
her for part of the trip, but she also spent time alone practicing
yoga and sleeping at least eight hours each night, which
she rarely gets to do. Moreover, she used the time off to convoke
a national meeting of female organizers. That same year, Crain’s
New York Business named her one of its “40 Under 40” rising stars.
Then came Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” list
this spring.
Ever-humble, Poo is quick to attribute such accolades to her
cause rather than her aptitude. “It’s really recognition of both the
importance of domestic work in society today and the significance
of domestic workers organizing, advocacy and leadership
in the social change arena,” she says. “I feel proud to be a part of
a movement that inspires so many people.”
To view videos of Poo, go to Web Extras at college.columbia.edu/cct.
Nathalie Alonso ’08 is a freelance journalist and an editorial producer
of LasMayores.com, Major League Baseball’s official Spanish language
website. She also writes Student Spotlight for CCT.
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